


once, and once, and once (+ future)

by andromedabennet



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arthurian, Arthurian AU, Battle Scenes, Canon-Typical Violence, Excalibur, F/M, Fantasy, King Bellamy Blake, Lady of the Lake - Freeform, Once and Future King, Rape/Non-con Elements, Referenced Non-Con - Freeform, Reincarnation, Royalty, Violence, also lexa is here but she's a bad guy, king arthur - Freeform, not actually in the main plotline but referenced in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:35:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 55,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28859679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromedabennet/pseuds/andromedabennet
Summary: Bellamy, the prophesied King of Camelot, will be remembered throughout history for a lot of things. Most of them are barely true, and none of them are the love story that emerges between himself and Clarke, the ethereal and immortally-cursed Lady of the Lake, who spends centuries forced to watch the dead cross over into the next world.It all starts with Excalibur.[Arthurian AU including magic, battle scenes, and a love that cannot be constrained within a single lifetime]
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 62
Kudos: 102
Collections: The t100 Writers for BLM Initiative





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a labor of love first inspired by the moodboard by [Indie](https://twitter.com/bbybellmy), which then became a story through the prompting of a reader making a donation to The 100 Fic for BLM! You can prompt your own fics and art by checking out our [carrd](https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co/).
> 
> Some of this (very little) is based on actual retellings of King Arthur’s stories. A good chunk is me stealing from the BBC show Merlin (especially the aesthetics!). And the rest I made up and twisted to suit my needs.
> 
> Most characters are from the 100, though some (like Bellamy and Octavia) will have two names — a regnal name and their everyday use name. This actually is pretty common in more modern history, but I have no idea if this happened in the time period that the story is technically set in. I just didn’t want to lose names like Arthur and Guinevere entirely because they're so integral to Arthurian lore. I also chose to make their last name Pendragon rather than Blake to better fit the vibes. Forgive me for this! 
> 
> Other characters (Uther, Geoffrey, etc) are taken from the myths / history and have no counterpart within the 100 universe. Hopefully this isn’t too confusing.
> 
> This chapter has a little prologue of sorts (“now”), but the majority of the story including future chapters will be set in “then”, explaining how the misremembered story of King Arthur really went.
> 
> Also, a few extra notes:  
> \+ Because the stories of King Arthur are, in this universe, not accurate, “Arthur” and “Guinevere” (Octavia) are incorrectly remembered as lovers instead of siblings. To clarify, this story contains no incest!  
> \+ This story is also from both Bellamy and Clarke’s perspectives, but there isn’t a lot of Clarke in this chapter because frankly she isn’t doing much. There will be more from her later!

**Now:**

“Did you ever think,” she asks, looking out over the landscape, rolling green hills stretching for miles as the sun rises behind them, “that you’d still be here after all this time?”

From his place lying in the grass, the lake water lapping gently at his feet, he looks up at her. His eyebrow quirks up at her question.

“I don’t know what I thought, but I am glad it’s you. There’s no one else I’d rather have beside me on so long an adventure.”

“I’m afraid it hasn’t been terribly adventurous. You’ve been stuck here so long that you’ve barely seen anything else.”

“One day, the time to leave will come. And then I’ll miss the simplicity of what we have here. You’re forgetting; I’ve already been the hero.”

She laughs. “Sort of, anyway.”

The words don’t sting anymore — not after so long. He knows her too well to think that there is any ill-intent behind the joke.

“And so have you,” he teases.

She smiles, turning her head again to the land around them. They’ve explored every nook and cranny of the surrounding fields, watching as time has left its mark on the world.

“Do you ever feel sad?”

“Sad?”

“Not about what happened,” she says quickly. He had, of course, felt rather melancholy in the early days. So much potential, so much waste. “Sad that they don’t remember correctly. Sad that the bards didn’t stick to the facts, that the poets have lost your story to time.”

“I’m not sure. There’s a kind of beauty in being forgotten — turned into a myth that bears no resemblance to reality. It means the real story is just for us.”

“Still,” she says, fingers brushing through the blades of grass beside her, “it might’ve been nice to have the truth of it.”

**Then:**

The birth of the new prince happens at what the chroniclers will one day call a _turbulent time._

It’s hardly his fault, and he makes nary a peep while being born unlike most children. Indeed, he is so quiet following the delivery that his mother has half a mind to think he’s dead. It’s only the midwives’ reassurances of his health that keeps the day's plans in line.

“Oh thank god,” his mother murmurs with a relieved sigh. “It would’ve been a terrible tragedy if the prince had died.”

“Of course, my lady. But you’ve delivered a healthy baby boy, the future King of Camelot. You should rejoice in it today instead of fretting over what could’ve been.”

A second lady-in-waiting pipes up from where she’s washing the child off in the corner. “And anyhow, my lady, the king could always sire another child.” The queen shoots the woman a displeased look, to which she quietly says, “Begging your pardon, ma’am.”

“No, I am very happy that this one is healthy and a boy. I don’t believe I’ll ever put myself through such an ordeal again. His Highness shall have to find happiness with this one.”

The queen’s attendees, far older than the young woman’s scant twenty-two years, just look at each other with small smiles. Every new mother declares that she will never again deliver a child after the trials of the first, and they are almost always wrong. One day, the queen will relent to His Highness’s wishes for further heirs.

The Queen of Camelot herself, formerly Princess Igraine Aurora of Mercia, just lays back on her pillows, a pleased smile on her face at having swiftly achieved the only goal required of a king’s wife.

“Let it be announced throughout the land,” she whispers, “that the people of the kingdom are delivered a healthy prince. Arturus Bellum Pendragon. Arthur Bellamy.”

The name had been a sticking point between the to-be parents. Her husband King Uther wanted a strong latin name for his son to bear — a future warrior and commander. And yet Aurora had been none too pleased by such a harsh, heavy label for a young child, and so she took it in her own hands to soften it. The bards would sing of this child some day: The Ballads of Prince Arthur Bellamy would roll off the tongue far easier than anything her husband thought fashionable.

A messenger is sent to deliver the news of the prince’s birth, but before the people in the lower town can even find themselves celebrating, there is more news.

For every rainbow, there must be a storm. The birth of a prince ensured the continuity of the king’s line, giving the Pendragons a dynasty in Camelot that would last far beyond Uther’s own life.

Which was a good thing, really, on account of the other news.

The King of Camelot is dead.

***

“Tell me the story again, mama. Please, won’t you?”

Aurora looks down at her son, her little Bellamy, only six years old.

“Again?” She asks, a twinkle in her eyes. The child is so often in lessons or training. Even so young, there are many duties he must attend to. It is a treat to see him for an uninterrupted afternoon. 

“Please, mama. I can’t remember, but my tutors say he was the best of all the kings.”

 _“You_ will be the best of all kings. But okay, my darling, I will tell you once more, and then you really must go visit with your Uncle Marcus.”

He makes a displeased little sound, turning his eyes up to her imploringly. “He will make me sit on my throne for ages. I never know what they’re talking about, and no one will let me play.”

“I know, my love. It would be easier if you were still only just a prince, but you are the king now after your father’s death. You must try very hard to be as kind and good as he was. You are so young yet, but the people still need to see their leader.”

“But I’m just a _boy,”_ he pouts petulantly.

“Of course you are.” She reaches out to tickle him. “Which is why Uncle Marcus does all the grown up work. You just have to smile and sit still so that your people remember that you are indeed a good little king.”

“But it’s so hard! My legs get so _wiggly,_ and Uncle Marcus says that kings aren’t meant to wiggle. Only what am I supposed to do when they start to feel like that if I can’t leave my throne?”

“If you get the wiggles again today, I’m afraid you’ll have to try very hard to think of something else. But for now, let me tell you the story again to take your mind off what is coming.”

“Thank you, mama.”

He cuddles up to her belly, rounded again with pregnancy, and she kisses the little king’s dark curls.

He is too young to wonder why a dowager queen is again pregnant, but the people still whisper behind closed doors.

“There once was a prince, strong and sweet and true,” she starts.

“Papa!” He exclaims, bouncing in his seat despite how many times he’s heard this tale. She smiles every time, the joy on his face infectious.

“Yes, my darling. He was the handsomest prince in all the land, and he rode to Mercia with his family one summer to end the feud between our two lands…”

The little King Arthur, known only to her as her sweet baby Bellamy, rests himself against her side, sighing at all the right places in the story, enjoying the tale of his father’s gallant days as a young prince and a knight of Camelot.

She runs her hand through his hair, the task of retelling never growing old.

When his little sister arrives months later, he runs a gentle finger over her face as he tells her the same stories of his father the king. He doesn’t always get the order of the details correct, but it just makes his mother smile at him indulgently. Even with the events out of place, he still remembers every bit of her tales, relaying them as faithfully as he can.

He asks his mama if the baby’s father is the king too, but she just smiles carefully and says no.

His mother asks what his sister should be called, and he says without hesitation that she should be Octavia. He, after all, is the King of Camelot — not unlike how Augustus was the Emperor of Rome. His sister should bear the name of a great Roman woman. They will be a matched pair with their latin names.

Aurora smiles, saying she would be happy to make that her second name to honor her older brother. Her first will be Aurora’s own mother’s name. Guinevere.

Lady Guinevere Octavia Pendragon is christened three weeks after her birth. The now seven year old king, the baby’s brother, is the honored guest at the affair. He smiles down at his sister, helping to baptize her with water from the font, even though he makes a bit of a mess of it.

Later, he asks his mother why his sister is a _lady_ rather than a _princess_ if she is also a Pendragon, but she only says that the matter is complicated. Still, he thinks a daughter of the royal house should have the title she deserves.

His mother just kisses his forehead in the privacy of his chambers, saying that one day, when he is truly king and no one stands above him, he can dole out titles wheresoever he pleases.

As Octavia grows, he tells her stories in the nursery every night. A king, after all, is given little room for play and fun. He trains for his future as a knight and learns the history and governance of Camelot. He listens to the petitions of the people, even when it’s no more fun at twelve or fourteen or sixteen than it was at six. 

But he can always sneak away when the dinner revels have ended to see his sister and tell her stories. Sometimes they’re of brave knights rescuing princesses. Other times they’re about demigods and the Olympians in a sunny, far off land. The overcast skies in Camelot make it hard for Octavia to picture, but she learns to enjoy the tales of the great heroes nonetheless.

Sometimes she asks why there are so few women saving the day in the stories. He says that it’s for the same reason that he has to teach her sword fighting in secret now that she’s ten. Their lives are simply too strictly governed to give women what they’re due.

Still, he starts weaving his own stories about Circe and Calypso, Medusa and Medea, giving them fantastic journeys and chances to slay their own demons.

And yet, his favorite story to tell has always been the one of his own father: King Uther Pendragon, fearless leader of Camelot and her knights.

***

One night, when he’s leaving Octavia’s room, he passes his mother’s chambers. Usually by so late in the evening she would already be asleep, the candles in her room blown out long before. 

Tonight, there is instead a flickering of light from where the wood meets the stone floor. Through the door, he can just make out his uncle’s voice.

“Do you think it was wise to tell him that story so often as a child? When it’s not the truth?”

Bellamy pauses, his breath catching in his throat.

“I don’t know what you wanted me to do,” Aurora whispers angrily. “Uther was his father. I couldn’t very well disparage him. It was bad enough we made Bellamy a king on the day of his birth, but there was hardly time to wait.”

“But now he idolizes the man that the kingdom hated.”

“No, my darling. He idolizes _you,_ he just doesn’t know that I’ve always been telling _your_ story instead of your brother’s. And really, you’ve been a father to him for so many years anyway. Not having Uther’s influence in his life was the right decision. Who knows what Bellamy would’ve become under his father’s tutelage. He’s such a good boy now — fair and honest. He will make a fine king when he finally comes of age and your regency ends.”

“Will you ever tell him? What my brother did to you? How he forced himself on you so you would marry him instead of me?”

Bellamy’s eyes go wide with shock on the other side of the door, and he pushes his ear ever closer to the wood separating them.

“We’ve had this fight a million times, and you know my answer never changes. I can’t. I don’t want him to know that he was born of hate. That we killed Uther to protect him and ourselves.”

Bellamy stumbles away from the door, unwilling to listen to anything more. He runs up the twisting stone staircase until he’s back in his own chambers, When the door is closed and latched behind him, he leans against it heavily, needing the time to steady his breathing and calm his thoughts.

Only there can be no calm. Not when everything that he knows about himself is a lie.

He thinks of _Lady_ Guinevere Octavia Pendragon, who carries the family name without the appropriate title. He thinks of how she favors his paternal uncle much stronger than had ever really made sense to him.

He thinks of his own birth, which happened quite suspiciously on the same day as his father’s death.

 _It was lucky,_ people had taken to saying, _that the little king was indeed a son. Otherwise who knows what would’ve happened. Would the throne have gone to the dead king’s brother? Would the Mercian royal family claim it on their daughter the queen’s behalf?_ The rules were far from distinct during times of chaos. In the moments following the death of an heirless king, anything could happen.

His mother had told him how glad she was to give birth to a little boy — a child who spent but moments as a prince before ascending to the highest title in the land. But now he knows that if a daughter had been born in his place, Aurora and Marcus would’ve simply turned to their plan b: themselves.

He paces the length of his room for nearly an hour before he decides that he is simply too restless to sleep. He needs to get out, get away from the castle and the stifling nature of his role and the knowledge of what was done to put him here.

Evading the guards in the castle isn’t easy, but he has a hand in creating their rotations. He sneaks through the hidden halls where he knows they shouldn’t be at this time of night until he is in the stables, pleased to see his horse Llamrei already staring back at him.

“Come on, girl,” he whispers, not bothering to saddle her so late at night. The stable boys are asleep somewhere in the loft, and he has no desire to answer their questions about why the seventeen year old boy-king is fleeing into the night.

He mounts the horse carefully, guiding her out of the stable until they can sneak out of the gates. It’s not a simple task, but again, if anyone knows a castle’s weakest points, it’s the king. When they reach the lower town, he sends Llamrei off into a gallop, wanting to be out in the forest as quickly as possible. Riding through the trees, having to focus all his attention on staying safely astride Llamrei, is the only way he’ll be able to stop thinking about his mother.

They ride for seconds, minutes, hours maybe. He can hardly tell. It feels as though his mind is moving through mud, and yet what can only be maybe three quarters of an hour later, he brings Llamrei to a walk, letting her move closer to the lake looming before them.

He hops off the horse’s back, pleased that she is docile enough to simply stand beside him placidly, dropping her head to where land meets water. He pats her flank, letting her take a rest. While she drinks, he sits beside her on the bank, staring across the foggy water. It’s impossible to see what’s on the other side of it or indeed how far out the lake goes. He didn’t even know a lake was here; in all his years of hunting and studying maps of his kingdom, he’s never noticed this one before. 

He skips rocks across the surface, not caring that most sink on the first jump. He hardly has the energy to bother with the motion in the first place, and yet his hands feel that they must be doing something.

He wonders if his father was as bad as his mother says he was. If he was a hated king who drew the ire of his people. If he forced himself on her to make an advantageous match, knowing that it would leave her no choice but to marry him or be ruined.

He wonders if he’s anything like the man who sired him. He can already feel the unimaginable weight of the crown they will place on his head in only a month’s time — his father’s ceremonial crown. How can he be a good king — a good man — if he is the natural son of a tyrant?

Or perhaps his mother was lying. Only she didn’t know he was listening in, couldn’t have known when he would leave Octavia’s room for the night after their stories. If she’d said these things in confidence to Uncle Marcus, then they must both believe them to be true.

And yet they’d _killed the king._ Committed regicide — along with mariticide and fratricide — on the very day of his birth. They’d condemned him to a life as a boy ruler, always always wondering if he will be the man the kingdom requires him to be.

Now he wonders, if he fails, will someone simply decide to dispense with him too? Must he spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder in fear?

He groans, throwing himself back to lie on the bank of the lake, arm over his eyes. For several minutes he allows himself to mourn the loss of the father who never existed: a brave man, strong and fair and virtuous. He’d spent so long trying to live up to that man’s memory, and yet now he knows it had all been a lie.

Suddenly, he hears a rustling in the woods behind him, and he rolls to his knees without thought.

He hadn’t brought his sword with him, too keen to escape without being detected, but he has a long dagger strapped to his leg that he pulls out immediately.

“Who’s there?” He asks into the darkness. “Show yourself.”

“Who are you?” Comes an angry voice, suddenly and inexplicably from behind him.

He turns again quickly, seeing a shape ten feet out in the lake. The silhouette of a person, damp and dripping from their place waist-deep in the water. 

“How did you do that?” He asks unthinkingly. He should be preparing to fight, forcing this enemy into submission. And yet he can’t help but be more curious than anything.

“I said who are you, and what are you doing at my lake?”

“I’m—” he starts, before thinking better of it. “I’m smart enough not to give my name to some malevolent stranger. Not when you refuse to acknowledge my own questions.”

“You don’t belong here,” they say with a growl. They move slightly, gold hair glinting in the little light cast off from the waning moon. “Leave, now. Before I force you out.”

He grits his teeth. “I’d like to see you try,” he says, too boastful for his own good. His mother would say that his goodness is only sometimes overpowered by his pride, and yet now is clearly one of the times where he becomes foolhardy in the face of a challenge. He can’t help it — he’s the king. If he isn’t the best, he will be supplanted quickly.

So he’s learned to make himself the best.

“Don’t be stupid. Leave with your dignity intact and don’t return. Whatever you’re looking for, it isn’t here.”

Petulantly, he throws the last of his skipping stones into the water. He isn’t even aiming for the person, just trying to show his displeasure, and yet they must take offense.

Without warning, a wall of water springs up before him, bowling him over and pushing him back to the treeline. By the time he has his bearings again, he’s been laid out flat on the ground, staring bemusedly up at the starry sky above them. Llamrei, a smarter beast than he, had already moved there when trouble started brewing, and she noses at his dripping form.

He gently pushes her muzzle aside so he can stand, and when he turns to look back at the lake, he only sees an open field.

He spins in a circle once, twice, completely at a loss for where the massive, fog-covered lake could’ve disappeared to. There is no logic to it — even by the slightly skewed rules of magic, though he’d hardly call himself a believer in all that nonsense — and yet it simply ceases to be. The grass of the field isn’t even wet.

Eventually, after too long searching for something that isn’t there, he climbs back onto Llamrei’s back with an irritated huff. 

The leader of a kingdom who can so easily be fooled by a cheap parlor trick. What a joke of a king he’s proving himself to be.

He must be losing his mind.

In the morning, Octavia smiles at him from across the audience chamber while he and Marcus, in his capacity as regent, hear the grievances of the people. 

He makes no conversation with his mother or Marcus, but if they notice anything is amiss, neither brings their worries to his attention.

Still, he smiles back at Octavia every time they catch each other’s eyes. She, truly, is the only honest thing in his life.

***

Sometimes, in an idle kind of way, the woman at the lake will wonder who he was — the boy who’d found his way to her.

Not his name, of course. She knows that already. It was more than obvious based on his thoroughbred palace horse, the fine fabrics in his clothing, and — moreover — the fact that he’d found himself at her lake in the first place. There are really only so many people that he could be.

But she hadn’t needed any of that information. She’d been asking instead who did he think he was, intruding upon her like that. It’s no one’s place to be here but her own, and she’d rather not deal with those who seek to torment her.

Still, in the long hours after his departure, the light of day reminds her that it’s been a long time indeed since she’s had any company. It might’ve been worthwhile not to scare him off if only for that.

But the next night, and the next, and every one for what must be weeks, he never returns. She wonders if he’s been scared away for good.

She wonders, too, if he’d even known what he’d found.

Then she rolls her eyes at her own stupid thoughts. It hardly matters. Either he’ll come back or her won’t, but either way, it won’t be to entertain her.

***

He tries to find written chronicles of his father’s reign, even going so far as to ask the keeper of the castle’s library for any documentation on that time period. It’s not like it was that long ago — not even quite eighteen years, and yet no one ever seems to mention it. Geoffrey looks uncomfortable when asked about books on the subject, mentioning only that the regent had asked that those be kept away.

Bellamy almost yells at the frail old man, the familiar cadence of his title on his tongue, but instead he finds himself sighing.

“Please, Geoffrey,” he says, already exhausted. “I will be crowned as king in my own right within these twenty days. I don’t think there is a point to hiding important information from me any longer.”

“With respect, my lord, I don’t think Sir Marcus was trying to hide them from you specifically. While a great many people will remember your father’s reign for the rest of their lives, the timespan for one person is but a blink in history’s eyes. Eventually, there won’t be a living soul who remembers the days of Uther Pendragon personally, and then they will have naught but these texts upon which to form their opinions. If we keep them hidden away, at least…. Well, you have worked hard to create your own good name, my lord. No reason to muddy it with the past.”

Bellamy smiles wanly at the man. 

“I appreciate your forethought, Geoffrey. But I would like to see the books all the same.”

Geoffrey bows silently, wisely choosing to hold his own tongue no matter what his continued opinion on the matter may be. “Of course, highness.”

When the books are spread across the table in his chambers, he learns some very disconcerting things.

Firstly, as far as he can tell, what he overheard that night is true. Uther Pendragon hadn’t been a well-loved king, choosing to feed his own greed and avarice over helping his people. A few years before Bellamy’s birth, there had been a drought, and as a result the crop yield was unusually low. 

While Uther’s court had eaten to the point of being sick with what they collected from the farmers in tax, the people of Camelot had starved. Thousands of people had perished, many of them young children and the elderly.

There isn’t much to be said about his mother, most of the gruesome details being things she’s kept to herself so as not to sully her reputation. Still, it was noted by the record keepers that Princess Igraine Aurora of Mercia had indeed formed a connection to the younger Prince Marcus Pendragon, and though there had been no formal declaration of intent to wed, it was all but understood. 

Aurora’s father had tried to stop it, saying a daughter of his would marry the king, not a younger brother set to inherit nothing but a comparably small estate, but Aurora had been stubbornly insistent. In fact, it was the repeated insistence that she would marry Prince Marcus if it was the last thing she did that led to the information making it into the chronicles at all. She had been so vehement in her preference that it became known to all those around them, including the record keepers.

All of this was, unfortunately, what Bellamy had expected to find. Though he was none too pleased at learning the reality of his father’s choices, hearing the conversation between his mother and Uncle Marcus had prepared him for this reality — at least once he’d had time to process it.

What he hadn’t been ready for was just how short the texts all seem to be.

Each book he opens — there are only three, one kept by Geoffrey himself and two by others — seems to have been intended to be long indeed, and yet the stories abruptly cut off on the day of his son’s birth.

He doesn’t begrudge his mother’s actions that day — at least, he can’t bring himself to without more details of why and how it happened. And yet there is something so telling, so nakedly, horribly obvious when he looks at these texts: his father had done nothing of note besides harming his own people and stealing his brother’s intended. He died at age thirty as a disappointment to the very crown he bore.

Bellamy doesn’t think he’s anything like his father — on that front, his mother is correct. Whatever ill she might have done in killing her husband, she had saved Bellamy being raised in proximity to a bad man and a worse king.

Still, for all his virtues when compared to the former monarch, he can’t help but wonder if this is to be his legacy as well — books only half filled, saying nothing of consequence except where he is to be condemned. Bellamy has never thought himself particularly vain, but he’s always known that his name would be remembered to some degree after his death. 

He would like to think it would be for something better than this. He wants to be a king whose legacy isn’t hidden away in the back of Geoffrey’s library until such a time that perhaps the books can be destroyed.

What he wouldn’t give to be the hero of his own tale, just like the stories he dutifully recites each evening to Octavia.

He returns the tomes to Geoffrey the next day, trying not to show his disappointment with the man who he has discovered behind the writing.

When he goes to Octavia’s rooms that night, he tells his nightly story with a little extra gusto, wanting to feel the thrill of a journey he’s yet to go on.

He never tells her the story of his brave father’s trials again.

Though she’s never been one to hold her tongue, Octavia, nearly eleven now herself, decides it best not to ask.

Her tutors would be so pleased if only they could see this level of ladylike behavior. But there has only ever been one person in her life who has earned her respect, and he has never had to fight for it.

***

On the day of his eighteenth birthday, he processes into the great hall of the castle to the front of the room. Dozens of noble guests and his fellow knights line either side of the room, watching him as he moves in his heavy ceremonial robes.

At the front of the room, he stands before his Uncle Marcus and his mother, along with the head of the church. He kneels before them, making his solemn oaths to protect Camelot with honor and gallantry, just as the knights’ code dictates.

They put holy oils on his forehead and palms before placing the jeweled crown upon his hair, the gold from the sunlight illuminating the ornament beautifully for the crowd to see. 

Though he has been king for the entirety of his life, this is the first time that he will be a king who truly answers to no man but himself. Still, a wise ruler listens to the advice of his councilmen and to the troubles brought to him by his people.

Now, though, it will fall to him if mistakes are made. He will be the deciding voice in any room. If he chooses not to heed the warnings that are given to him, there is nothing anyone can do to stop him. If he wishes to be as tyrannical as his father before him, the only recourse anyone would have would be to kill him.

He wants, more than anything, to be a good and worthy man now that the lives of so many are in his hands. No matter what is said of him throughout his kingdom and the ones in far away lands and distant shores, let no one call him greedy or heartless.

“Rise,” the cleric says, after the king is appropriately outfitted in his jewels. “Sir Arthur Bellamy Pendragon, King of Camelot.”

He stands slowly, turning back to the people in the audience. His sister, right at the front, smiles back at him in a purple dress made specifically for the occasion.

For years, he’s told her stories of the perfect king, and all along they were a lie. He hopes now that he can become that person in her eyes, if for nothing else than his own peace of mind. Octavia deserves to know that goodness is possible. That it can exist beyond fairy tales.

He smiles back at her, the crowd chanting a rousing chorus of _long live the king! Long live the king! Long live the king!_

After enough time has passed, he smiles out to the people, nodding his head slightly in acknowledgment of their words and to allow them to cease their chanting.

“Lords and ladies, knights of the realm and guests of the crown, I appreciate your presence here today for my final investiture as king. After many years under my Uncle Marcus’s tutelage and regency, I am now prepared to take on the responsibilities of leading Camelot to greater glory still.”

The assembled crowd cheers at the words, and he is glad of it even despite his own fears. There is no time for worry now, not with every eye on him.

This, he knows. Speeches — rousing words that will rally the people behind him — are one of the few parts of the job that truly comes naturally.

“Tonight, we will feast until the sun rises, but before our revelries can begin, there is one last task that needs to be completed.”

Marcus gives him a side-eye from his place at Bellamy’s right, having no idea where this is going. The first set of recruits who will be granted their knighthood aren’t meant to have it bequeathed to them for another week, and there is really no other reason to delay the ending of the ceremony.

Bellamy thinks of his mother and his uncle — the two people who were torn apart as youths. Now, even after all this time, they still haven’t wed, probably in an attempt not to draw the ire of anyone who might think of Uther’s death as suspicious, though there likely aren’t many willing to question it.

Though they had lied to him, letting him believe a fantasy about himself and his parentage, he does feel sorry for them. They did what they could to raise him well, and he owes a lot of himself to their guidance.

And all this time, they’d been forced onto parallel paths, never being able to truly cross.

Well... not never, he supposes.

He smiles again at his sister.

“Lady Guinevere Octavia,” he calls, summoning her forward.

Octavia, looking suddenly small at just ten years old in her heavy damask dress, approaches him carefully, not certain why she’s being called forth in front of so many people. She is usually kept as out of the way as possible. Not hidden — she’s too well-known for that — but certainly not paraded before scores of important guests.

“Kneel,” he continues, gesturing to the velvet cushion before him, the same place he’d knelt only moments before.

“Bellamy,” she whispers up at him, her bright eyes wide on her face. He allows the corners of his lips to turn up reassuringly, gesturing down to the pillow.

She finally situates herself on it, looking so small before him, but the spark of a fire is still in her eyes, and he knows it may one day burn through the world. It makes him smile to think about. 

He pulls his sword from the sheath at his side.

Goeffrey, in his office as chronicler and record keeper to the king, says to the assembled audience, “The Crown has called forth the Lady Guinevere Octavia Pendragon.”

“My lady,” Bellamy says, the teasing, loving smile of any proud older brother on his face. “I seek, on this day and before these witnesses, to name you a Princess of Camelot. Will you accept this title with my gratitude?”

She stares up at him before glancing behind him, presumably to their mother. At what he assumes must be her reassuring nod, Octavia returns her gaze to him. “I will, Your Highness.”

“And do you swear to serve Camelot nobly and truly as her Princess?”

“I do so swear,” she replies, a smile finally blooming across her cheeks.

“Geoffrey,” he says, turning to the old man. “The crown.”

He hands over a golden diadem, beautifully crafted with the finest filigree, dark red rubies placed on each point. 

Bellamy takes the crown carefully, moving to rest it on Octavia’s head. The coronet itself is a little large — meant for an older woman’s use, and yet he couldn’t turn away from the piece when he’d seen it in the castle’s treasury. Though he will be able to dispense many gifts of crowns and jewels to his sister in the future, he wants this to be the one she receives her title in. Red, after all, has always been her color.

“Then having sworn these solemn oaths, know now that I, Arthur Bellamy Pendragon, by right of arms the King of Camelot, dub you a Princess of Camelot. Rise, Princess Guinevere.”

His duty-bound words now said, he reaches out a hand to help her stand, smiling as he turns her to face the crowd. The people, who once may have questioned his sister’s presence for being a bastard in the royal court, now all bow their heads before her.

She smiles up at him, eyes twinkling. Out of the corner of her mouth, she whispers under her breath, “Thank you.” Then, before he can even offer her a response, she continues. “But I really would’ve liked a knighthood.”

He laughs as they stand hand in hand before their subjects. The people will wonder what was said just then — what made the king laugh during such a serious moment — but he has never been one for ceremony. 

“One step at a time, Octavia. I’m sure I’ll be scandalizing people in a few short years with your knighthood, don’t worry.”

She squeezes his hand tighter, a look of recognition passing between them at the words. Bellamy is perhaps the only person who truly understands Octavia — sees her as a whole person with dreams and desires that go beyond the confines of these walls — and she loves him for that. It is a bond only they share.

“By my eighteenth birthday then, surely. If they can make you a king, surely I can be a knight.”

“You’d better start practicing.”

That evening, as the players play and the fools make merry, Bellamy smiles down from the head table, laughing with the joy of the day. Aurora even allows Octavia to take careful drinks of her unwatered wine, though she’s mindful not to allow the child too much.

***

The next morning, when they have recovered from the aches of the previous evening, he goes to his mother’s room. He wants to speak with her — tell her he knows what happened with his father and finally understands why she did what she had to do. He longs to know this side of her, strong and powerful and unwilling to be the poorly-treated pawn of her husband. This image, one he’s never truly had in his head before, reminds him so much of the woman he imagines Octavia will one day be, and he’s glad that she’s had such a role model in her life.

When he reaches her door, he knocks gently, knowing that the celebration kept her up as late into the night as it did him.

He hears no response, so he carefully eases open the door. When he glances in, he finds her still in bed, hand dangling over the side as she rests.

He smiles gently at the sight until he notices that her eyes are wide open, staring at nothing.

“Mother?” He asks, running to her side to shake her shoulders. “Mama? Mama, please.” His voice cracks on the words, realizing that there is nothing to be done.

That is how they find him later — the guards coming in to see the king holding his dead mother’s hand, weeping.

***

“How did it happen?” Bellamy asks, face blank with shock even hours later. Octavia has long since buried herself in his side, and his hand rubs up and down her back thoughtlessly, hoping in some small way that it provides her the comfort he cannot feel.

“I don’t know,” says Jackson, the young, new court physician. “There doesn’t seem to be anything truly wrong with her — at least nothing that I can see. She’s never complained of her heart before, but maybe…?”

Bellamy shakes his head, lips trembling. “How do you not know?” He asks cuttingly. “It’s your _job_ to know. It’s your job.”

His voice shakes as he speaks, sadness cutting through his anger.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I can do a fully autopsy, but I—”

Uncle Marcus, from his seat in the corner of the room, turns to them with tear tracks on his cheeks. “Leave, Jackson.”

“Your Grace?”

“At once. We’ll call for you if you’re needed. Don’t start the autopsy unless you hear direct orders from the king to do so.”

Jackson nods nervously, bowing before he scrambles out of the room.

Bellamy turns to his uncle. “Why did you send him away? I want answers.”

Marcus shakes his head wearily. “You won’t get answers from him.”

“What do you mean?” He’s irritated suddenly — angry at his uncle’s presumption. He turns to sarcasm. “Do you accuse my physician of harboring secrets? Conspiring against the king’s family?”

“No, Bellamy, I don’t.”

“What then? What piece of information are you keeping from me?”

His uncle looks pointedly at Octavia, still curled into his chest. “Is she awake?”

He shakes his head, feeling the slow, steady puffs of breath along the collar of his shirt which indicate that she has escaped the tragedy of this moment.

“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Marcus starts.

“Spare me the dramatic origin story,” he says with a huff. “I know what the two of you did to my father.”

Marcus’s eyes shoot up to him, wide and worried at this news. “How? How could you have known?”

“It’s no matter. I’ve known for weeks and have tried to make my peace with it. Tried to reconcile what you’ve done with the people I know you both to be. Or,” he closes his eyes tightly at the reminder, “or who she was, anyway.”

“Bellamy, you must understand, your father was not a good man. Not a good leader for Camelot or a good teacher for you. You are a better, smarter, kinder person for having been kept from his influence.”

He holds up a hand. “I’ve already told you to spare me. I may understand your motives but I have no desire to hear the details of your crime. All I want to know is what you think this has to do with her death.”

Marcus looks down at his hands folded in his lap.

“My brother was a very angry man. He had been given everything he ever desired as the heir to the throne — the best gifts and jewels and women. When it came time to marry, kings from across the land and over the seas would’ve offered him their daughters for the chance at an alliance and to see them as queen, even knowing that Uther Pendragon would make for a very poor husband. Still, he had his pick of the lot, but he didn’t just covet the most beautiful or the most wealthy. He wanted the unattainable — something that would truly showcase his importance over everyone in Camelot. So he went after the only thing he couldn't have: the woman who’d already sworn herself to me.”

Bellamy nods, remembering this part of the story already.

“And we… We didn’t have a choice once he did what he had to in order to secure her hand. We were forced to go along with it. But he knew in the months between their wedding and your birth that we wanted to take action against him. He knew exactly how much she loathed him.”

“But it didn’t protect him from her in the end,” Bellamy said carefully. “Poison, I assume? He wasn’t careful enough if he knew you both wanted him dead.”

“In many ways, he was quite smart. In others, though, he was foolish. He knew what we wanted, but he was too caught in the trappings of his own majesty to assume we’d ever actually pull it off. Even still, knowing that it was something that we wanted, he…”

“Yes?”

“He placed a curse.”

Bellamy raises his eyebrow, skepticism clear on his face. “A curse? That’s what you expect me to believe?”

“You and I both know that magic is real, Bellamy. Don’t be daft.”

“Magic is all but dead these days. Curses and court sorcerers — that’s the stuff only bards sing of.”

“All but dead isn’t dead. Your father was a king; you don’t think he had powerful friends who could enact a curse?”

“If he placed a curse on her, why the hell did you still go through with killing him?”

“I wasn’t certain he’d actually placed it until tonight. Like I said, he had friends who I imagine could’ve made it happen, but I’d hoped he’d never actually done it. He’d spoken about it only once, in the heat of an argument. I didn’t think he’d managed to go through with it before we killed him.”

“And now she’s dead,” he murmurs angrily. “What was the curse? Why did it take so long to be fulfilled?”

“He said she would never see her child rule if she made an attempt on his life. I suppose he thought that her love for you — even before you were born — would be enough to keep her from doing anything drastic.”

“And instead she killed him anyway, and the curse decided to hold off until I came of age.”

Marcus nods solemnly. “You were ruling in name only before yesterday’s ceremony. I know it took over your childhood, but even as much as we put you through was nothing compared to what you’ll be doing now. And I suppose that whatever malevolent force he bargained with to put the curse in place found that a fitting time to strike. At the height of your mother’s happiness.”

Bellamy glances at his uncle, surprised at the words.

“You know,” Marcus says, “you must know that she was so proud of you. Of you both,” he continues, glancing at the sleeping Octavia. “She’d waited her whole life to see you as king in your own right. To see Octavia as a princess.”

“I don’t want to talk about how proud she was,” he says, voice choked with tears. “I can’t do that right now. Not now. Not—”

Marcus cuts off his spiraling. “I understand. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“I just can’t believe it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

Marcus sighs, rubbing a hand over his tired, aged face. Bellamy wonders how many of the lines and wrinkles were caused by his years as regent, trying desperately to hold Camelot together in the face of a child-king vastly underprepared for his job.

“You’ll lean on me, and your sister, and the advisors you trust. And your sister and I will lean on you in return. In private,” he adds on carefully. “In public, we are stoic and saddened, but not lost in grief. There isn’t the time for that. Not in this family.”

Bellamy nods mechanically. Kings, as he’s learned over many years, don’t have the luxury of submitting to their emotions. Since he was a young child, every tantrum was hidden away, smacked out of him by tutors and nannies who were harsh on their tiny leader.

His mother and Marcus hadn’t liked it, but even as his direct family, there was only so much they could do about it.

“I will hold the vigil.”

“Are you sure? I can do it myself if it’s too much of a burden. I know it isn’t… strictly proper, since we weren’t married. But everyone knows what we were to each other. It was the worst-kept secret in the kingdom.”

He thinks of his mother, loving a man she could never marry because he was her dead husband’s brother. Because she couldn’t allow anyone to grow too suspicious of the murder.

He thinks of his sister, whose hair he continues to pet as she sleeps against him. The girl who’d spent ten years as a lady, a title they’d barely managed to grant to her as the bastard daughter of a Mercian-born queen and Camelot’s regent. Even Marcus, who’d ruled on Bellamy’s behalf for eighteen years, didn’t have enough power to give his daughter the status of princess. Only Bellamy retained that level of authority.

“I’ll do it,” he says. “Of course you’re welcome to join. But she is my mother, and I would like to serve as chief mourner.”

“I’m not sure your council will like that. Not just after your coronation. It’ll come across as a bad omen.”

Bellamy blinks at him tiredly. “I don’t care. I don’t care.”

His fingers continue to run through Octavia’s long, unbound brown hair. The motion and her weight against him are the only things tethering him to this moment. If she wasn’t here, he’s certain that the king of Camelot would simply float away, disappearing into the sky until no man or beast could ever again find him.

His head aches, the stress of the day making him feel woozy. 

Marcus nods finally. “I’ll have the servants and knights organize it for this evening. And the bells will ring out a peal for her passing as soon as we send the word.”

Bellamy allows his eyes to drift closed for a second, trying so desperately to center himself in these final, private moments with his family.

She isn’t coming back.

When his eyes open again, they are hardened by resolve. It’s all he has left.

“Let it be done.”

***

That night, the servants dress his mother in her finest clothes and lay her out on the long stone table placed in the same hall that he’d been crowned in only the morning before. He kneels at her side, head resting on the stone near hers. He longs to hold her hand, but they have been folded over her stomach, and he doesn’t dare move them.

He sits at her side all night, the moon moving across the sky outside the windows, though he hardly takes notice of it.

Marcus joins him on the opposite side of the altar, resting a hand at Aurora’s temple, his fingers brushing carefully over the unnaturally pale skin.

Octavia tries to stay awake with them for much of the night, intermittently crying and staring off into the distance, but eventually she once again falls asleep. He’s glad — he doesn’t want his baby sister to have to remember the long hours of this night.

They sit with Aurora until the sun rises, keeping vigil until the knights arrive.

“Your Highness, Your Graces,” Sir Nathan Miller says, looking at the three members of Aurora’s family. “The funeral arrangements are prepared for Her Grace when you are ready.”

Bellamy nods, and they each take a moment to kiss Aurora’s forehead before six knights step forward to carry her body to the courtyard.

Bellamy, Octavia, and Marcus trail slowly behind them, watching as they arrive at the packed square where knights, nobles, and people from the lower town have come to send away the mother of their king.

The same cleric from his coronation makes a long speech about Aurora’s service to her adopted kingdom and the memory she leaves behind. Bellamy stands expressionless, longing for this to be over.

When the cleric finally finishes, the king walks to Sir Nathan, taking the lit torch from his hands. He approaches the wood pyre they have reverently placed his mother on, flowers dotting her hair.

Standing at the base of it, he looks up at her face, placid in death. It’s not the way he wants to remember her, but he knows this is an image that will never leave his mind. Still, he cannot cry. Not here.

“In peace may you leave the shore,” he whispers to her. She will be well on her way to Avalon by now, at least if the stories are true.

Then he drops the torch into the kindling, turning away so he does not have to see it go up in flames around her.

***

He makes no excuses for slipping away again on Llamrei that night, though he also doesn’t bother to hide what he is doing. 

He is the king now, and while he’s sure his council would never advise him to travel unaccompanied at night lest he meet bandits in the woods, they also can hardly stop him when he orders them away.

He rides out at a slower pace this time, not looking to be anywhere except far from his prison of a castle.

It probably shouldn’t surprise him when, only twenty minutes later, he finds himself before the same lake as last time, mists heavy over the water. Still, since he hadn’t even been riding in the same direction as before, he doesn't understand how he could have reached the same destination.

Too tired to bother with the hows and whys, he dismounts from his mare and moves to sit at the water’s edge, the little waves nearly lapping at his boots.

He hears motion coming from the water, but he doesn’t even raise his head. If a horrifying lake monster wants to devour him whole, now would be the time to do it. Even with a proper sword at his hip this time, he won’t defend himself. He doesn’t have the energy.

“Why are you here again?”

He looks up in shock. The voice from before, once so powerful and other-worldly, is now quiet and vulnerable. When he sees her, the woman walking out of the lake and into the shallows, a dark blue dress partly held together by the plant life from the lake, his eyes nearly bug out of his head.

“Excuse me?” He asks, utterly bemused by her sudden and non-threatening appearance.

“Why are you here again, _Sir?”_ She asks, looking pointedly at his sword.

“I think I should be asking you that,” he replies tiredly. He rubs at his eyes, feeling every hour that he’s been up in the last two days. If he thought she wouldn’t steal his sword and lop his head off with it, he’d probably fall asleep right here next to the lake. “You always seem to be finding me. I’m never looking for this place.”

She purses her lips, displeased by his statement.

“I don’t know why the lake would call to you. But you must be looking for something. Everyone is.”

“I’m not sure what I’m looking for. Distance, maybe. Room to mourn.”

“Mourn?”

“My mother passed away yesterday.”

“Ah,” she says, a realization in the little noise. “The king. I should’ve known.” She looks, for a moment, like she’s debating whether she should dip her head in subservience to his title, but in the end she keeps her chin up and her eyes on his. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

He squints. “How did you know? I doubt you’re getting many visitors here to your disappearing lake,” he says sarcastically.

She bites her lip. “I hear things.”

“Heard from whom?”

“Not important.”

“I doubt that very much, my lady,” he rolls his eyes.

She sits beside him at the water’s edge, her skirts heavy and damp around her.

“Will you be here long, highness?” She bites out. “In case you hadn’t already noticed, this is my home you’ve decided to make camp at.”

“You live at the lake?” He asks, even though it doesn’t really come as a surprise. Why else would she be here so often in the night?

“Well it’s _my_ lake, so yes.”

“And what’s across the way? Behind the fog?”

“Oh, nothing much,” she says, brushing him off.

He bites back a rude response. 

“You aren’t very talkative, I take it?”

“I have very few lakeside visitors, as you’ve seen fit to remind me. You’ll forgive me if I’ve lost my manners along the way.”

“How long have you been alone here?”

“Long enough. How long are you going to spend pestering me instead of mourning beside your family?”

“I can’t mourn with them. Not really.”

“Why? Because of the attention on you?”

“No,” he says easily, playing with the hem of his tunic. “We know well enough how to wait for private moments to express grief.” He lets out a sigh, not sure why he wants to unburden himself to this woman who won’t answer a single question with a straight answer, but he hasn’t any other options. “I can’t mourn with them because it’s my fault she’s dead.”

She gives him a skeptical look. “How do you figure?”

“She was cursed because she did… something in order to protect me.”

“Ah,” she says knowingly. “Yes, killing the former king.”

“How do you—?!”

“Oh, relax. I’m hardly a threat to you. Like I said, I hear things sometimes. But since I also live alone at the side of a disappearing lake with no visitors bar yourself, you needn’t fear that I’ll go telling anyone the truth.”

He mutters under his breath, “I don’t see how you could hear so much if you never have visitors.” She doesn’t dignify this line of questioning with a response. “Anyway, you can see then how it would be my fault she’s dead. If she hadn’t been trying to protect me, the curse never would’ve been placed.”

“You think pretty highly of yourself.”

“Excuse me?”

She laughs. “You’re making this all about you. You don’t think she felt empowered killing the man who’d spent months making her life terrible? Who stole away from her the future she’d imagined? Keeping you safe might’ve been a motivation, but it was only one among many. She saved herself, too.”

“And now she’s _dead.”_

“There’s nothing to say she would’ve lived longer if he’d not died. For all you know, she could’ve been killed far earlier. She took her own future into her hands and delivered eighteen years of happiness through her actions. It may be over now, but it doesn’t change what killing him granted her. She lived a life free of him, even if it was shorter than you’d like.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“I think it’s admirable,” the woman says. “If only we could all slay our demons so easily.”

He looks over at her curiously, wondering what this lady of the lake would do if she was free to avenge whatever might still haunt her.

“If only,” he says instead noncommittally.

“All I’m saying is, blaming yourself is a little self-centered. Maybe that’ll help unburden you.”

“Maybe. Thanks anyway for trying.”

“No need for thanks. My services don’t come free, so you’ll get the chance to repay me in due time.”

He sighs wearily. “Repay you how?”

“I don’t leave the lake and it’s surrounding vegetation,” she says easily, gesturing around them. “So next time you decide to run off and inevitably find yourself bothering me again, I’d like you to sneak me something more exciting to eat. Strawberries. Freshly baked bread. Any meat that doesn’t come from a fish.”

Her eyes glaze over at the thought of foods he’s sure she hasn’t even allowed herself to imagine in some time. Through the dull ache of his sadness, he manages to laugh lightly at the sight. 

“Any food possible that I can steal from the kitchens, got it.”

“Steal?” She asks teasingly. “You’re the king. I’m sure you can take whatever you like.”

“Your master of secrets coming round to keep you informed clearly isn’t the castle cook, then. She’d just as soon bat me away with a rolling pin, crown or no.”

“Good. Even kings need to be reprimanded now and again. Keeps you humble.”

He smiles. “Whatever you say, my lady.”

She leans back on her hands, dipping her bare toes into the water before them.

“Will you slay your demons, do you think?” He asks lightly, thinking of her words from before.

“Hm?”

“It’s just… You seem to want to right the wrongs done to you the same way my mother did.”

She smiles, but it’s fake and uncomfortable now, not coming even close to touching her eyes. “I think the time for righting wrongs has long since passed in my case.”

“What will you do instead?”

“Wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’m sure I’ll recognize it when it comes.”

He raises an eyebrow but says nothing in response, looking out again over the water, a bright moon illuminating the ripples.

Finally, he nods his head, feeling the call of his bed in the castle. He hasn’t forgotten either his grief or his guilt, but her words have stopped the hole in his heart, giving him the chance to heal with enough time.

“Then I wish you luck in finding it,” he says as he rises, moving to grab Llamrei’s reins. “Until next time.”

“Don’t forget my payment.”

He smiles, climbing onto the horse’s back as she continues to look out over the water.

“Of course not. A king pays his debts. My lady,” he says in farewell.

“Highness.”

He digs his heels into Llamrei’s sides, riding aimlessly, knowing that it will inevitably put him in front of Camelot’s lower town in any case. The lake, he understands now, follows its own system of logic entirely.

When he falls asleep that night, he can’t help but wonder about her: the lonely lady of the lake.

***

_Distance,_ he’d said. _Room to mourn._

She can’t help but wonder still if he is completely unaware of what he has now twice stumbled upon entirely by accident. If his chroniclers and bards don’t sing of the place that she haunts like a spectre in the night.

If he doesn’t know, then maybe he will keep finding this place — keep giving her small, joyous moments of company to erase the tedium.

And if he one day does discover the truth… well, at least she knows she’ll likely see him one more time. After that, like all the others who fail in their quest for the magic she cannot give them, he will stop looking. Soon enough, they all either go mad with the search or give up, disillusioned by the whole endeavor. 

But until then, she sees no need to hurry him along. She might even get something pleasant out of it in the meantime.

Food. And maybe a companion, too. At least for a little while.

She hopes he’ll return.

***

She waits a long time. Or it feels like a long time, anyway. It’s harder to tell these days, now that she makes little attempt to catalogue the passing of the hours. 

But it feels like a while.

He doesn’t return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Handy dandy guide for anyone confused:
> 
> Avalon — the afterlife basically  
> Albion — like, old England  
> Camelot — kingdom in Albion ruled by the Pendragon family
> 
> Uther Pendragon — former king, Bellamy's dad  
> Marcus Pendragon — Bellamy's uncle  
> Igraine Aurora — Mercian Princess, Queen of Camelot  
> Arthur Bellamy  
> Guinevere Octavia  
> Lincoln Lance (eventually, as he isn't here yet)
> 
> Let me know what you thought!!! Comments are very appreciated :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 of 5 (which is a change as it was originally projected to be 4). My goal is one update a week as the story is written and just requires edits.

The days after his mother’s death are busy; from dawn till dusk, he is consumed by the rigors of leadership. There is always a new set of commoners coming to be heard, a new emissary to speak with from distant lands, a new speech to write or a meeting to attend or face to greet.

The only times he ever feels truly like himself are when he’s practicing with his sword during the knight’s training or when he’s saying good night to Octavia.

Of course, at nearly eleven, she claims not to need bedtime stories anymore, but between the loss of their mother and the harsh schedule that keeps him away from her at almost all hours of the day, they enjoy their routine too much to completely give it up. So after she puts in a few cursory complaints about _not being a child, Bellamy, really,_ she will then graciously allow him to continue anyway.

And it’s fine, his life. Not great. Not perfect. Certainly not the life people much imagine when they proclaim themselves king in their dreams. But it’s good. It’s enough.

He gets on with most of the knights, though the oldest among them have trouble respecting such a young and inexperienced king. Even after spending his entire life training for leadership, he watches as the elder knights often try to defer to Marcus. It doesn’t bother him that much, even if he knows he needs to be able to stand outside of his uncle’s shadow. But when things seem especially uncertain, the recruits will turn to Sir Charles Pike, the head of Camelot’s knights for the last many years.

Technically that job should’ve been Marcus’s, as a stand-in for Bellamy, but with all that had been going on in his earliest years of life as king, Marcus had chosen to delegate it to a trusted friend while he handled the governing and his nephew.

And now, of course, the job should be — and rightfully is — Bellamy’s, but the hierarchy is muddled. They have spent so long deferring to one man that some cannot fathom answering to an eighteen year old boy, even if he happens to be king.

So Bellamy trains, knowing that he must always be the strongest fighter — both more skilled and more brave than his enemies and allies alike. There is no room for weakness, especially when there is so much to prove coming out of the years of the regency.

He spends every free hour he can in the fields, fighting against Sir Nathan Miller and his father. They’re the only two knights willing to let him try anything he can to overpower them, and their bruises often prove their devotion.

(And for that, he is certain, they deserve far more than their knighthoods. Not many would allow themselves to be punching bags for someone so determined as he is.)

For nearly an entire year, everything is peaceful, and for that he is grateful. 

Almost nineteen and with many months of confidence under his belt, he is more ready for the challenge when it comes.

But _more ready_ isn’t perhaps the same as _ready,_ and Bellamy tries to keep his face impassive as the gauntlet is dropped before his feet.

“Sir Pike,” he says disaffectedly, sitting on his throne as though it is the most comfortable chair in the kingdom rather than the hard, stiff-backed thing it is. “You will explain yourself.”

Pike glares at him through an insincere bow.

“Your Highness,” he says, voice carrying through the hall as the dinner conversations come to a stop, watching the standoff between the king and his second knight.

Pike has spent the last week complaining about the way Bellamy handled a skirmish on the border with Mercia. A fight had broken out between the knights patrolling on behalf of their respective kingdoms, and though no one was killed, there were several injuries on both sides.

Of course, each side claims the other started it.

Bellamy, in talks with his maternal relations ruling over Mercia, had chosen to overlook the skirmish, stating that it was in neither kingdom’s interest to escalate a situation that barely ranked above jousting injuries. The knights would all live to serve another day. No noble family was in need of retribution when there was no honor truly lost.

But there are those who disagree.

“Get on with it then, sir. State the reasons for your challenge. No one here has all day to wait. I’m sure you’ve thought this through well enough before going so far as to issue it against the king.”

He smiles, turning his head slightly so that the warm lights flickering from the sconces on the walls will reflect off his golden crown. He doesn’t consider himself especially vain, but there are times when the trappings and symbols of his power can do more than the most well-crafted rebuttals.

“Your Highness knows that many of the knights do not agree with the handling of the Mercian affair. I stand before you as their champion, ready to defend Camelot as you will not.”

“Oh?” He asks, raising an eyebrow, tedium evident on his face. It won’t do to look at all concerned by the challenge. He must always cloak himself in calm control. “And to what end? For my acquiescence? Or for my crown?”

“I suppose whichever comes first, Sire.”

Bellamy stares down at him for several seconds, not blinking or showing any emotion on his face. 

If he could see into Charles Pike’s soul, he is sure there would be an abundance of greed for the very throne he must now bow before. Pike cannot bring himself to be humbled before a man with greater standing in the world than he has, and it could very well be his undoing.

If Pike can manage it, he will try to take the throne. It wouldn’t be pretty — even if he could seriously wound or even kill Bellamy, there would still be a fight between the factions who support the Pendragons and those who are ready to usher in the Pikes. It would be bloody.

But there’s nothing he can do to stop it now.

“Very well. Two days hence, in the courtyard. An hour past the dawn. One sword each, with the option for a shield should you like one. Are the terms amenable to you, _sir?”_

“They are, Highness.”

He waves a hand nonchalantly, sending him off. “Then be on your way, Pike. I won’t have need of you until the fight.”

Pike just glares at him again as he dips down in a shallow bow, a mockery of subservience. The move can hardly be considered honorable, but there are greater issues at the moment. 

The dinner conversation never fully resumes once Charles Pike has left. In his wake, there are only the tittered whispers of those wondering what exactly will occur in two days at the duel. It’s an unusually dangerous precedent to challenge the king, especially in response to so small an issue, but no one really believes that Sir Pike is concerned about the border skirmish. He simply can’t handle the demotion that came with Bellamy’s maturation to the full status of king.

Bellamy finishes the last of his wine, setting the goblet down loudly on the table before he walks out of the hall, the Pendragon-red of his knight’s cloak floating dramatically behind him.

Octavia, despite having taken her dinner privately with her tutor, has somehow already heard about the night’s events by the time he gets to her chambers later that evening. Her opinions are, as always, _loud._

“You can’t fight him, you idiot.”

“Why? It’s literally part of my job. What did you think all that training was for?”

 _“War,_ not the petty squabbles of old men. I don’t know why everyone makes women out to be so catty and prone to gossip when it’s really your lot.”

He rolls his eyes. “Well the challenge was issued, however stupidly, in good faith. I couldn’t very well refuse it; I’d look like a coward.”

“And now you might leave the courtyard in two days looking dead.” She punches him in the arm as she says the words.

He has unfortunately taught her all too well the skills required for a proper right hook.

“Christ, O, calm down.” At the look in her eyes — not fury, but fear — he backtracks. “It’ll be fine. I am more than capable of beating Sir Pike, no matter how long he spent at the head of the army. He is older now, and has spent much of the last year sitting about and sulking while I do all the real work. Plus, he would be a fool to fight til the death. Even if he did win — which he won’t — it would likely be only to first blood, or until someone yields.” He pulls her into a hug. “This won’t be like mother.”

“Please, Bell. Don’t do something stupid. You know how you are,” she jokes, though the words are still laced with hidden worry. “Have one of the Millers fight on your behalf. Kings can do that.”

“I don’t need a champion to hide behind. I’ve trained to be a warrior for exactly this reason. People will always think they can do the job better than me, and I need to remind them why they cannot.” He pauses, petting her hair gently. “If I refuse to defend myself against nobles who question my judgment, then those who have faith in me from every class will start to wonder if I’m truly capable of protecting _them_ should war come. I have to fight.”

She groans, annoyed with his self-righteous martyr act. _It’s all for Camelot_ has been the rallying cry of his entire existence, but he doesn’t know how to operate in any other fashion. He was born for this one task — to protect and serve the kingdom which made him her king. There can be no distractions from that.

“Then find something else. A trick in case he fights dirty, or a magic item to protect you.” She looks up at him through the curtain of her dark bangs, eyes pleading. “I can’t lose someone else. Not again. Please, Bellamy.”

He sighs, but eventually nods to her demands. “I’ll agree to look into your suggestions and nothing more. But I won’t abide by tricks. Only something that could help me while also being fairly within the bounds of the challenge. It would be dishonorable to try at anything else.”

She scoffs. “Your honor is going to be the death of us all.”

“Not you,” he smiles, playfully messing up her hair. “You’ll be an even greater swordsman than me soon. You’ll know how to defend yourself.”

He tells her of the swordswoman he has hired to teach her more of the art than he can manage alone. It’s unusual, having a princess learn to fight, and even more unusual still that her master tutor will likewise be a woman. The Lady Indra is one of the greatest fighters alive though, and it will be difficult for anyone to argue against him when he has her skills at his disposal.

Octavia is suitably distracted by the conversation, and before long he is sneaking out of the room, her soft snores following him as he eases the door closed behind him.

The next day, he spends as many hours as possible in the library, looking to see if there is an answer to Octavia’s pleas. He doesn’t expect there will be, but he’d sworn to look, and he takes his oaths seriously.

Still, he’s not prepared for the answer he finds.

***

_Excalibur (sword)_

_Magic item created by Merlyn Emrys, sorcerer of the first King of Camelot’s court. It should only be wielded by the fairest and noblest of all men, allowing them to strike true at any target set in their path. When King Arturus I died, it was taken to the Lake of Avalon, where it was lost to time so that no unworthy man or king could afterwards use it for his own nefarious purpose._

Then, at the bottom, in a note scribbled in the margins by the original author are the words:

_Should still be in the Lake? Could possibly be found by another for future protection of the realm. Might be dangerous if found by the wrong person._

_No one knows where lake is — reveals itself only to those who are looking maybe? Or magic involved that only allows certain people to reach its shore? Many have gone mad in the search for lake — do_ **_not_ ** _mention to desperate kings unless absolutely necessary. They will not find the sword._

Bellamy blinks down at the words in alarm. A magical sword left in a lake that only reveals itself to certain people? 

He shuts the book immediately, returning it to the shelf he’d taken it from before bidding a hasty farewell to Geoffrey.

He tells his servant that he will need his horse saddled after dinner.

“And if you could,” he says as he changes into more suitable riding clothes, “please have the cook prepare and wrap extra rations for the journey. Berries. Some meat if she can. Bread.”

“Will you be gone into tomorrow, milord? Shall I pack for the night, inform your guards?”

“No need. I won’t be away very long at all, I shouldn’t think. Just the food will do for the present, thank you. Don’t alert the knights.”

The boy — Sterling, maybe? — gives him a strange look, but scurries off quickly enough to do as he’s bid.

After a quick dinner, he escapes into the darkness wearing his plainest cloak, carrying with him a saddlebag of the finest foods he could acquire on such short notice.

It takes barely ten minutes this time to find the lake.

She was right, even if he can’t explain why. The Lake of Avalon calls to him.

He dismounts from his horse before Llamrei even comes to a full stop, and the Lady appears before him like a phantom.

“Have you brought it?”

“The food?” He asks curiously. “Of course. I swore, didn’t I?”

“That was a while ago, wasn’t it? I can hardly tell these days.”

“It’s been a year.” As he speaks, he pulls out the food he brought, wrapped in wax paper and cheesecloth. “Do you not follow the passing of time here at the lake?”

Distracted by the food, she doesn’t even look at him when she answers nonchalantly. “Not so very often. Some years disappear before I even have the time to notice them. Others drag for a decade. It does little of use to stay so attuned.”

“Even with your informants?”

She bites ravenously into the bread. “Even so. Now, why have you come?”

“Isn’t it possible that I’ve just come for the delightful company?” He asks sarcastically.

“After a year? It’s unlikely. Anyways, kings are always the same. I doubt you’re here to prove me wrong.”

“I’d like to think that I’m at least marginally better than the worst of them.”

“Perhaps,” she says flippantly, clearly not bothered in changing her opinion of him. “Better is subjective. But I didn’t say you were of their quality, just that you’re no different. All kings seek this lake for the same reason.” At his raised eyebrows, she finally glances away from her food to give him a pointed look. “Or is it not the sword that has brought you here today?”

It is, of course. He only set off for the lake for that specific reason, but he doesn’t like to prove her right.

“What would lead you to that conclusion? I’ve been here twice over and never had a motive.”

“Yes, because you stumbled upon this place twice over, each time not meaning to find yourself at my lake. Now you’re here on purpose, riding out in the night with the payment that I’ve asked for. So tell me, _sir,_ are you not here for the sword?”

He frowns, knowing that it would be dishonorable to lie. There are times, of course, where even he is willing to bend the rules in the name of security, but there is nothing on the line here but his pride.

Still, he shoots her an unamused look, to which she just laughs.

“Yes,” she says teasingly. “I’m rarely wrong about kings.”

“I wouldn’t have asked for the sword if it wasn’t for my sister. She is worried about me.”

“Going to battle?”

“No,” he says, thankful at least that they have no worries about that at the moment. “Just a challenge. One I’ll likely win, but the odds aren’t so great that she is content to let me fight unaided.”

“She’ll have to resign herself to it.”

He frowns again, looking out onto the still waters which have turned an ominous blue-black in the darkness.

“So you won’t give it to me, then? There is no price I can pay, no favor I can give that would make it worth your while?”

“I wouldn’t hand over a magic sword even if it was in the lake. Since it is not, despite all claims to the contrary, I can be of no use to you, King Arthur.”

Though her words are stiff and sure, her tone makes him think that she’s lying. Equivocating, perhaps. Still, if she won’t give it, he’s not sure what else he can do.

He could fight her, he supposes. Some would argue that it’s unchivalrous to fight a lady, but he’s fairly certain this one can hold her own. Too well, actually. Whatever power she has in connection to the lake, it’s not something he can fight with his sword. He’s already been bowled over by the water here once, and he isn’t keen to do so a second time.

“It’s not here then? Really?”

She shakes her head, saying nothing else. Her eyes stay hard on his face the entire time, waiting for him to acquiesce. 

He purses his lips in a tense line.

“Fine, then. Enjoy your food at least. I waited long enough to deliver what I owed.”

He turns to leave, grabbing Llamrei’s reins. 

“Wait,” comes her voice from behind him. When he looks over his shoulder, her hand is stretched out towards him.

“What?”

“I can’t give you a magic sword to make your challenge any easier. But I can give you some advice.”

He walks back over to her slowly, afraid that being too eager may frighten her away somehow.

“And what wise words will you gift me?”

She twists her lips up in something that is half scowl, half smile.

“If you’re being challenged from within your own recruits, show them who is in charge.”

He looks at her with a confused grimace. “That’s entirely the point of the challenge, isn’t it? To show them who is in charge through force.”

“People give their trust and their swords to a leader that they think is worth the effort. You are a new king in the ways that really matter — untested in battle, and they know it. So the challenge may help, but what you need more than their fear is their faith. Give them a reason to unite behind you. Show them why you will be a different kind of king. A better one.”

He thinks on her words, letting them settle over him.

Finally, he dips his chin in a nod. “You’re right. And it’s good advice. I can’t change their attitudes by fighting them all one by one until they capitulate.”

“No,” she smiles. “You can’t.”

Then she sinks down slightly, grabbing at the hem of her dress. She tears a strip of the blue fabric off.

When she stands, she holds it out to him in offering.

“For you.”

He squints down at it.

“Your dress isn’t magic, is it?” He asks skeptically. Wouldn’t that be a nice turn of events.

But she just laughs, rolling her eyes good naturedly. “Not everything has to be magic to be worth something. This is just a favor.”

Struck dumb, he mumbles out, “Your favor?” 

As if it would possibly be anyone else’s seeing as she’d just torn it from her own clothes.

“Of course. Will you wear it? For your fight. I can’t promise it’ll bring you luck, but I rather hope it does.” She smiles. “If you die, I might not find someone else to bring me food for a long time.”

He can hardly think with his brain fogged over. He hadn’t anticipated this turn of events at all, but he puts his arm forward anyway, allowing her to wrap the scrap of fabric around his bicep.

“Thank you,” he manages finally, the word heavy in his mouth.

“Good luck.”

He walks back over to Llamrei, this time on legs that don’t feel quite as steady as before. When he’s on her back and ready to ride off into the night so that he might get a few hours of rest before the fight, he looks back over his shoulder.

“You called me Arthur before. King Arthur.”

“Yes? That’s your name, isn’t it? I’m not so ill-informed that I don’t know who you are.”

“Yes of course. But,” he smiles fondly, “you should really call me Bellamy.”

“Bellamy,” she says slowly. “Alright.”

“And your name?” He asks, wanting to stop calling her _The Lady of the Lake_ in his mind each time she crosses it.

She grins, patting the horse’s flank until Llamrei starts moving away from her. His eyes don’t leave her face, and she calls out to him as he travels further into the distance.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Her laugh follows him all the way back to the castle.

***

The next day, when he wins the fight against Sir Pike, defeating him in only six minutes, he smiles down at the scrap of blue wrapped around his arm.

Octavia tries to ask whose favor he wears — who brought him luck in the fight to prove his abilities to those who question him — but he doesn’t answer. The Lady of the Lake is his own personal mystery.

But two months later, when he begins work on a plan to unite the knights behind him, he has only her to thank for it. Though her idea wasn’t revolutionary by any means, it was her words that spurred him on to take needed action.

A month after that, the finest woodworkers in the kingdom deliver a massive round table to his council rooms, around which each knight of Camelot will have an equal seat and equal voice.

When they hear the news, the knights seem stupefied, unused to having such trust placed on their shoulders by a king.

“The people of Camelot look to you to protect their homes, their families, and their livelihoods. You wield the swords by which they are saved from destruction, but you are also responsible to never use them against someone unfairly. It is a heavy burden and one that I expect you all to execute fairly. 

“I place my trust in you each day that these expectations will be met, and that must come with the benefit of being able to speak your minds. So at the table, we will converse as equals, freely sharing the ideas we think will best serve the realm. Do you understand?”

Everyone nods, and they move to take their seats.

***

She grins when she hears the news — she hears everything eventually, though some pieces of information take longer to reach her than others.

The Round Table. There’s something resplendent about such an idea. She wonders if it works in practice as well as it does in theory. If the sharing of ideas still means that people will accept the decision he must come to at the end of it, or if it only makes the process harder, noisier.

Still, there’s something wonderful about the attempt at egalitarianism. She likes to picture them all, cloaked in the red of the Camelot knights, debating the smartest ways to protect the lands that they hold dear. She doesn’t know many people who would give up some of the power at their fingertips in order to make things more just, and she’s pleased that he’s good enough to try.

It’s better, she thinks, than lusting after a magic that he will never have. More pragmatic to work within the bounds of what the world has already offered him, rather than going on a search as countless others have for a weapon he will never carry.

But she’ll miss him, now that he has no reason to return.

She wonders each day if he still has the favor she gave him.

For the next two years, she sees nobody at all.

Nobody alive, anyway.

***

She looks up in alarm the day that she finally hears a familiar horse making its way to the water’s edge.

“What are you doing here?”

She hasn’t seen him in forever now, and she’d assumed that he was doing well enough in the aftermath of the challenge and the creation of the table. But he comes up to her, looking tired despite being only twenty-one. The world always sits so heavily on his shoulders when she sees him, like Atlas beneath the sky. 

She’s aware that she only sees him at his worst moments — when he’s looking to escape from his reality or for a magic sword that will save him — but she has reason enough to believe that he’s always a little worn down by his role in the world.

It must be tiring. Not the way her life is, filled with empty afternoons and relentless tedium, but in a restless kind of way. No day can ever be boring. There will always be some problem that they ask him to solve, and he will always try to solve it.

“I’ve come for the sword,” he says easily, like they haven’t lived through this same moment before.

“Another challenge?”

“Not quite.” A small smile graces his face, and through his exhaustion she can see that he finds it all a bit funny, too. “The king of Caerleon is making trouble, trying to find a reason to go to war. I’d rather avoid it if at all possible, so a duel would be an easy way to avoid needless death.”

“And you want to fight the king of Caerleon?”

“If I must,” he answers wearily. “It’s a king’s job, isn’t it? I wouldn’t ask someone else to stand in my place.”

“You have a funny sense of your own honor. It’s a wonder you’ve lived this long, considering who you are and how many people probably want to challenge you.”

“Well, I can’t bring myself to make a knight take my place. They might like the glory that comes with it, but some of them aren’t ready for the consequences.”

“But you’d be saving them all from potentially dying on the battlefield. Surely one of them would step up in your place for the good of everyone. If they died, it would be in service to the kingdom, and isn’t that sort of the job?”

“Perhaps,” he says, though it’s clear he isn’t entertaining the idea. She thinks he would do far better if he had any skill for _delegating._ “But the simpler solution would be to come see the Lady of the Lake and ask her again for the sword she keeps.”

She smiles at him humorlessly. “I keep no sword, Bellamy.”

“You say that, but I have a funny feeling it’s not the whole truth.”

She shrugs easily. “I’m not as gallant as you claim to be. I don’t deal in whole truths, just objective facts. I keep no sword, so you’ve wasted your journey.”

“I haven’t. In fact, I’ve been rather remiss in waiting so long to visit.” He pulls another set of wrapped food items from the horse’s saddlebags, pilling the spoils into her hands. “For you.”

“You didn’t owe me a debt this time.”

He grins, and this time it’s genuine. “I did. For the favor. And for the advice.”

“I hear you’ve taken the advice and run with it. Much farther than I’d expected, if I’m honest.”

He rubs at the back of his neck, and she enjoys the hint of a blush that sits under the skin of his cheeks.

“Yeah, well… I suppose the Round Table is doing its job well enough.”

“I’m glad. It sounds like a wonderful idea to have so many voices working together for a common good. Most kings wouldn’t attempt something like that. They cling to every vestige of power they can.”

“Well, it isn’t always easy. Some of the older knights still complain when their ideas aren’t given enough attention or don’t factor into my final decision. But it’s not just me — the younger knights think that their ideas are as distasteful as I do.”

She blinks up at him, waiting for him to come to the obvious solution. He says no more.

“So create more knights. Younger ones with more diverse opinions that you can use to counter against those stuck in the past.”

“I would, but almost all the noble sons of age are already knights. At the very least, they’re squiring for someone else while they train to receive their knighthood.”

“So create knights from other men of skill? Surely you don’t think that only noble sons are capable of wielding a sword,” she laughs. “Anyone can do it if you train them.”

“Sure,” he says easily, thinking through the idea. “But that’s not how it’s done.”

“The Round Table wasn’t how things were done either, and now it is. You brought in a positive change — I don’t see why you’d have to stop there. Knight the people with talent, even if they don’t always have the pedigree.”

“People won’t like it.”

“The people who won’t like it are the same ones whose voices you already think are being used to keep the status quo. If you don’t want to pander to them, then _don’t._ Starting with this.”

“I don’t know. There’s a trust placed in knights _because_ of their birth.”

“Anyone can be evil, Bellamy, no matter their birth. Your father is proof enough of that. And anyone can be honorable.”

“You’re right. Of course you are. Noblemen don’t own the deed to honor.” He chuckles to himself with an air of self-deprecation. “I probably shouldn’t need you to tell me what’s obvious, but sometimes it helps to get a kick in the right direction.”

“I have the benefit of distance, I think.” She laughs, thinking about exactly how distanced she is, here alone at a magical lake with no set place in the world. “I don’t have to be as bogged down in details as you are, so I can just sweep in with my occasionally correct opinions and tell you where you’ve gone wrong.”

“More than occasionally correct, I think. I’m just not around enough to let you be correct all the time.”

She smirks. Part of her — a small part, thankfully — wants to ask him to come back more often. Beg if she has to. She hadn’t even realized how lonely she was until the few times they met. But there’s always so much time between each visit, and it would be nice to have more reliable contact.

But she can’t leave this place, and her pride won’t allow her to ask.

So instead she teases him. “If you’d like to be kicked in the right direction, just let me know. I don’t get enough excuses for violence here.”

“Noted. So no sword then?”

She shakes her head slowly, grinning the whole time. “No, sorry. Not today.”

“You should know that that was probably an ill-thought-out turn of phrase. Now I’ll just keep expecting the next visit to be the day where you do give me the sword.”

She shrugs. “Sure, if you like disappointment. I can’t stop you from hoping. But there’s no sword in my lake to give.”

“We’ll see.” He hops back on his horse. “Until next time, Lady…?”

“Of the Lake.”

He groans at the response. Still, he shoots her one final smile before he rides off again.

In the back of her mind, the same voice that wishes she could’ve asked him to visit more now shouts _Clarke! Clarke! Tell him your name is Clarke!_

But it’s been years since anyone has called her that. Clarke, like much of her past, belongs to the ghosts.

***

Sometimes, she’ll go months without hearing from him. She always knows he isn’t in such dire straits that he’s gone and died or anything, but unless someone comes to her with information, she is mostly in the dark. 

Then he’ll turn up — sometimes with a genuine reason for coming, and sometimes just because he seems to need an excuse to get away. But each time he comes, he starts with the same question.

“Do you have a sword for me today, my lady?”

And each time she’ll smile back at him, shaking her head coquettishly. 

“I haven’t, sir. Will you be off then?”

But whenever he makes the trip, he always gives himself enough time to stay at least an hour or two. She asks him about the goings on in the kingdom — what the knights are up to, how the town is getting on, if there are any interesting pieces of gossip to fill the empty world she lives in with a single moment’s color.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were spying on us, sending information to a far-flung land that you garnered directly from the king himself.”

She laughs, pushing at his shoulder as they each bite into the apples he’s brought along with him.

“You _don’t_ know any better. Who is to say I don’t pass this information along? People would probably be very interested to know that Sir Miles Shaw is enamoured with a blacksmith woman who his parents would never allow him to marry. It’s vital information. The kingdom could fall from that alone.”

He huffs out a little laugh through his nose. “Oh shut up. You’re just lucky I like you.”

She bites into her apple to avoid saying anything stupid.

He tells her about his sister when he visits, too. Each time he comes, the young Princess Octavia is less and less of a child. Her training with Lady Indra has made her one of the greatest swordsmen in the realm, and she is eager to receive her knighthood when she’s eighteen.

“I told her I could make it happen, but honestly I think it’ll be its own battle just to arrange. Even accounting for the knights of my own making — Atom, Wick, Lincoln, Finn, Macallan, Steve, and Murphy,” he lists off on his fingers, “it’ll still be difficult to convince everyone that having a woman serve as a knight is wise. Even if she’s also their princess.”

“Isn’t every pioneer thought to be afflicted by madness? It’ll be novel for a while. And then one day it won’t be.”

“Octavia is probably the only person I know who could handle being considered mad until the others come to their senses.” He pauses, looking out across the lake. It’s daytime today — more and more of his visits come in the day now that he can concoct his own moments to slip away. “It’ll be hard for me to watch her fight. I’ve spent so long trying to shield her from the worst parts of the world. But she’ll be good at it, and I’ll be proud to see her in the knight’s armour and cloak.”

“You protected her so well that you gave her the tools to protect herself, too. And soon she’ll be ready for whatever struggles come with being a knight.”

He smiles. “I hope.”

***

Every visit ends the same way, too.

“Until next time, Lady…?”

Each time, she smiles up at him on his horse — sometimes Llamrei, who she has come to know and love, but increasingly often he brings his stallion Hengroen instead.

“Lady of the Lake will do for the present, Bellamy.”

And each time, he shoots her a playfully exasperated look before riding off.

***

Eight years into Bellamy’s reign, the twenty-six year old king stands before his assembled court once again, the same way he did on the morning of his coronation.

“The Princess of Camelot will approach.”

Geoffrey, from his place at Bellamy’s side, echoes the words. “The Crown has called forth the Princess Guinevere Octavia Pendragon.”

She steps forward this time as a young woman of eighteen. She is bolder and brasher than she had been as a child, sure of herself in a way that she hadn’t been when he’d given her the title of princess. 

She stands in front of him, awaiting his words.

“Sister,” he says, smiling at her affectionately. He really is so proud of her accomplishments. He wouldn’t have spent nearly six months in a prolonged discourse with his knights about this very occasion if he didn’t think her more than capable of rising to the occasion.

He leans in, pressing a kiss to her cheek. No matter who her father is — or more importantly, _isn’t_ — he wants everyone in the room and in the kingdom to know that she is his family. She is their princess.

“I seek, on this day and before these witnesses, to name you a Knight of Camelot. Will you accept this accolade?”

She kneels on the pillow at his feet, eyes on him steadily.

“I will, Your Highness.”

Her voice is sure and strong, certain after all the work she’s done that she has earned this title. No hesitancy from others in the crowd will marr this moment for her.

He goes through the various oaths she must take — protecting Camelot and her citizens, behaving with honor and decorum at all times, never raising her sword against the defenseless, _et cetera_ — and she dutifully swears herself to each. She likewise swears an oath to protect the Crown with her life, but she rolls her eyes as she does it. There is, after all, no world in which Bellamy would want his little sister to die in order to keep him safe. But he must ask it of her formally and she must accept the charge, even if they both know it won’t happen as long as he can put a stop to it.

When she has forsworn herself to knighthood, he takes from Geoffrey’s hands the bright red of her new cloak, draping it carefully around her shoulders. She smiles up at him with pride.

He wonders what their mother would think to see this day. Marcus stands in the front row of the audience, silent tears rolling down his cheeks.

Next, he hands her a newly-forged longsword, the Pendragon family crest engraved in the pommel. It rests flat in her upturned palms as she looks it over, admiring the fine design of the blade.

“Then having sworn these solemn oaths, know now that I, Arthur Bellamy Pendragon, by right of arms the King of Camelot, dub you by all that you hold sacred, true, and good, a knight of the realm.” He pauses, taking one last glance down at her before he looks around the room, pronouncing the final words for all to hear. “Rise, Princess Guinevere Octavia, Knight of the Round Table.”

There will always be those who doubt, but the thunderous applause that rings out on that day will live in his mind eternally.

***

The next time he visits her, he beams through the entire retelling of the day, and she is selfishly happy to see this side of him. She imagines that he can’t be quite so effusive in the castle, always needing to behave the way a leader should. But here, alone with her at the lake, he can be as proud and joyous and exuberant as he wishes, every inch the young man he is.

She asks about Octavia’s first days as a knight, and though he groans through the complaints about having to watch his _little sister_ flirt with Sir Lincoln Lance, she can still see the pride that reflects off of him. Her entry into the knights’ ranks had gone surprisingly smoothly, but mainly because he’d already argued away all the naysayers before she was made official. As such, though others were sometimes wary of her ability, they never questioned her right to be among them.

“Of course, as soon as she realized they didn’t think she fully earned her spot, she made sure to fight them each one by one on the practice field. And that shut them all up pretty quickly.”

“Are you still the best of the best then?” She teases. “Or have you been supplanted?” 

“I am, but only just. I’m sure Octavia is gunning for me next.”

“Good thing she likes you. Otherwise she’d be wearing your crown in a year or two.”

He laughs. “Probably true. Anyways, she might still.”

“Oh? Planning to die soon, or...?”

“No, but the line of succession technically goes to her next. Well, I guess Marcus first if I didn’t specifically name her my heir, and then her as second in line. Everyone knows she was his child, and since he was my father’s brother and a prince of Camelot, he can claim if I die. And then… she’s technically a bastard, but I think that most people would back her before they’d back some distant cousin.”

She rolls her eyes before laying back on the grass. “I’m sure you’ll have lots of spoiled children to take over when you’re gone, and none of this will matter.”

His face darkens. “Maybe not.”

Drawing her eyes away from the sky, she looks over at him. “Oh? But you’re only twenty-six, Bellamy. There’s plenty of time for that. You don’t need to worry.”

“No, I’m not worried. In fact, I’m the opposite. Too ambivalent for my own good.”

“How so?”

“My councillors keep recommending princesses to me, wanting to send them invitations to visit so I can find a wife. But I’m just not interested. I don’t want to marry for politics.”

She gives him a blank look. “You follow every weird and chivalrous rule there is even to your own detriment, but a marriage of convenience is where you draw the line?”

“I guess I had to have a line somewhere,” he says thoughtfully. “I don’t know. My mother’s life would’ve been so much better if she could’ve married for love. I don’t want to mess up my own — or indeed someone else’s — because I chose someone I’m not suited to.”

“Your mother was a princess who happened to fall in love with a prince. There was no controversy in that match except that your father decided to get in the way. Otherwise, that love match would’ve made for a perfect political one, too.”

“Well, maybe I’ll fall in love with a princess.”

“So then wouldn’t you agree that the first step would be inviting them to Camelot so you can actually get to know them?”

He flops over onto the grass beside her.

“I guess. I still don’t want to.”

“Then you’ll fall in love with a peasant and scandalize your court all over again in the process. And while I’m a big fan of changing the rules, I think that one might actually be a step too far.”

“Probably,” he agrees. Then he turns his head to the side, looking over at her. “Are you a peasant?”

She gives him a surprised look, not having anticipated the question. She assumes it’s just a segue between something she’s said and something he’s wondered. It isn’t anything more.

“No,” she replies easily. “A peasant would have a job of some kind. Farmer, probably, or some kind of trade. I just sit about and watch the world turn from the lake, so I don’t think I meet the qualifications.”

“Did you always live here?”

“No, but I think that’s enough of me for today. We were talking about you anyway. How you refuse to marry.”

“It’s been years now, you know,” he murmurs quietly, the words sitting heavily on the grass separating them. He watches her carefully. “All these years, and you’ve still never told me your name.”

“It’s a relic from a time long ago. I’m not sure I’m even still the same person as I was when I carried that name.”

“But I haven’t anything to call you in my head. I could give you a name, but that doesn’t seem right. You already have one, even if you feel it’s been lost. You could dust it off and make it new again.” He hesitates on these final words, seemingly uncertain if he should say more.

Then, his hand moves between them, coming to rest on her cheek, the pad of his thumb running ever so carefully along the skin there. 

She can’t remember the last time she was touched. She aches to hold his hand there forever, never allowing him to draw back.

She draws in a ragged breath at the thought. What she wouldn’t give to feel this small caress always.

Finally, the last word he’d held in slips off his tongue. “Please.”

She swallows heavily, wondering at this piece of herself that she is being asked to give away after so long. A piece that she’s held so tight to her chest that she’s long refused to say the word aloud even to herself.

Still, at the sight of his wide eyes watching her in hope, she allows it to at last be free again in the universe.

“Clarke. My name is Clarke.”

He wets his lips carefully before smiling at her. “Clarke. The Lady of the Lake.”

Then he pulls one of her hands to his lips, kissing the back of it reverently. Just a knight greeting a lady. Nothing more. 

Not the king and the myth that she knows they are.

When he leaves that evening, he climbs onto Hengroen and smiles back at her.

“Until next time, Clarke.”

And it warms her, being known by him.

***

He returns to her as often as he can, bringing with him stories and smiles and all the things she cannot keep with her when he goes.

And each time, he touches her. A little more daringly with each attempt, like he knows now that she won’t say no. A hand on her cheek, her arm, her waist. He’ll wade into the water and pull her down beneath the surface with him. He’ll reach out to push the hair from her face.

Never anything untoward though. Not Bellamy, the man who has been raised his entire life to behave beyond any and all reproach. The voice in the back of her head wonders if he’s ever snuck into a lady’s room at night, enjoying the pleasures that would come with it. He doesn’t have to promise himself to someone to experience it, though she highly doubts he’s tried.

Still, there’s something of the rogue in him. His eyes flash with an unnamed glimmer — _want,_ maybe — each time his bare skin touches hers. He isn’t immune to desire.

And each time he leaves, she longs to follow him. She takes a step towards him as he goes, wanting so badly for the invisible chain tying her to this place to finally set her free.

It never does. And he always leaves.

***

“Sometimes I wish I could stay here forever,” he whispers to her late one evening. “Just set my crown down on the table for the final time, ride here, and never return.”

“Don’t tease,” she says with a smile, watching his face raptly. “You’d hate to be stuck here after a while. There’s no thrill to this life, and you’d miss being busy. Being needed. The thrill of being a knight.”

“Is it really being stuck here if I choose to stay with you?” He asks seriously. Then, in a lighter tone, he adds, “And if you think I’d lack the thrill of the fight here, then I’d argue that you’re not very self aware.”

She rolls her eyes at his cheek.

“You can’t stay. You have a life to live, a job to do. As much as you might enjoy it for a day or two, I know that you’d soon regret it. You’re incapable of walking back on the oaths you’ve taken.”

“No,” he murmurs sadly. “I don’t suppose I could. You know, when we were kids, I used to tell Octavia stories about the perfect king, the model upon which I wanted to base my life. I thought he was my father, but it turned out he was actually my uncle. Marcus, Octavia’s father.”

“Is he as much a slave to his word as you?”

“He is. Uncle Marcus is as good as they come. He has his morals and sticks to them no matter the personal cost.”

“Didn’t—” she starts without thinking, before quickly snapping her mouth closed.

“Didn’t what?”

“I don’t want to say. It’s not very polite, and I know how you are.”

He pushes her shoulder. “I’m not _always_ polite. I just know when I’m allowed to act like an ass. Most of the time, I can’t.”

“Except when you’re here,” she says with a smile. She likes being his reprieve.

“Except when I’m here. Anyways, you’ve tried to change the subject, but I haven’t forgotten. Didn’t what?”

She sighs. “Don’t complain when the question is as impertinent as I warned you about. I was going to ask, didn’t your uncle help in the plan to kill your father? Wouldn’t that go against his morals?”

“I don’t know, really. He swore oaths to Camelot, which are obviously important to him. And though they never married before anything happened, he’d obviously made promises to my mother that he’d intended to keep. So I suppose that, even if killing someone who holds no sword to defend himself was against my uncle’s morals, then he at least had other obligations of protection which allowed him to act against his personal beliefs.”

She hums, nodding her head. “Yes, I suppose that makes sense. It can’t always be black and white.”

“No, I don’t think it can. Although sometimes I wish it could. I might sleep easier at night that way.”

“Well, if Marcus was your ideal for the perfect king, then at least you managed to live up to it. I don’t think anyone would argue that you don’t hold the office well.”

“But if I could give it all up… I don’t know. It’s hard to picture my life any other way. I’ve always been this. Always known this life was coming. But if I could leave it, I would think about it.”

His eyes hold hers, and she wants nothing more than to pull him to her and tell him never to go. Never to leave her here alone, to spend the rest of his days at her side. 

He wouldn’t have to hold the world on his shoulders, or make the hard decisions that no one else wants to make. He wouldn’t have to plan for the years where famine strikes against his people or disease ravages the land. He could just _be._ By her side — two people learning who they are away from their shackles.

But she’ll always be here. She can never leave her shackles. 

And he can never leave his.

So instead of begging him to stay, she takes his big hand in both of hers, tracing over the lines in his palm like a fortune teller.

“Your destiny isn’t here,” she says quietly, barely managing to force the words out.

“You can read that in my skin?” He jokes. “Which line says _must put duty above all else?”_

She smiles sadly. “None of them. I just know you. And I know that there’s too much left to do, too many people who rely on you. You have to go.” The words _and I have to stay_ remain unspoken between them.

“Maybe one day, things will be different.”

The corners of her lips curl up further.

“I don’t think they will.”

When he leaves that night, he first places a tender kiss on her forehead, holding her there for several seconds as though he can’t bear to pull himself away.

She hugs her arms around him tightly, desperate in a way she doesn’t like. She doesn’t want to spend another evening — another several weeks in all likelihood — alone again.

“Five more minutes?” She asks carefully, the words spoken into his tunic.

His voice is quiet, but his little _okay_ gives her a moment of relief.

If she could, she would live in that moment for the rest of time. But the world is cruel, and so he eventually pulls away.

He says the same words back to her that he always does, but the mournful resignation to them is new.

“Until next time, Clarke.”

She sits in the shallows of the water, letting it dance across her fingers and wishing she didn’t always have to wait.

***

As Bellamy grows older and falls further into the role of ruling — no longer needing to go to the furthest extremes to prove himself now that he has time and experience under his belt — he starts to fantasize more and more about a life beyond the castle.

There isn’t one, of course. Not for him. But he persists in imagining what it would be like if he wasn’t a figurehead instead of a person.

Maybe he’d farm, or learn a trade. He could live in the lower town, protected by Camelot’s walls, or he could live in one of the small villages out in the country…

But the dream he persists in imagining, no matter how impossible it is, is that he lives in a little house by a lake that mysteriously appears to him.

Since he _can’t_ run away and forgo his responsibilities though, he spends most of his time trying to stay distracted. He deals with affairs of state, kingdom security, training with the knights, Round Table meetings, and, when the occasion permits, lots and lots of feasting.

It’s not a bad life, all things considered. He certainly has a more lavish existence than anyone else could boast, and he understands why that is enviable to those who don’t have enough. But he’ll never be free of duty, always tied to the crown he was born already wearing.

He enjoys the hours each day that he can spend with his knights, at least. Octavia has grown a lot since joining the ranks, and his inner circle of guards have formed a strong bond. He would trust any one of those elite few with his life and the lives of those most dear to him.

(Even if it means that he has to endure Sir Lincoln courting Octavia, which he tries to support despite his overprotective zeal. Lincoln is really the ideal man for the job — strong enough to fight by her side against any enemies that may come, but gentle enough to temper her anger and care for her.

Really, Bellamy couldn’t ask for better for his little sister. Lincoln, he imagines, will be remembered as the absolute best of all the knights. Certainly better than Bellamy himself. It would be a legacy worthy of the good man that Lincoln strives each day to be.)

***

On the night of Bellamy’s twenty-ninth birthday, the knights take him to an ale house in the lower town. He doesn’t get the opportunity to spend many evenings in pubs unless they stumble upon one in a town they're visiting on journeys through the kingdom, so it’s a special kind of treat to be able to do it on an otherwise ordinary day.

(And, they figure, even inhibited by drink, they are still more than capable of protecting the king should it come to it. Not that anyone expects they’ll need to, considering how popular ‘good king Arthur’ is among the townspeople, but Bellamy knows his friends are always discreetly on alert. The last thing any of them needs is to have him killed on their watch.)

They gather around a table, tankards of ale in their hands while Murphy tries to badly sing some drinking song about a knight and his many, many lady loves. Bellamy just hopes that the alcohol will kick in sooner rather than later if he’s going to be subjected to this all night long.

Miller punches Murphy’s arm, joking that he could never get that many women if he tried.

“Fucking rude,” Murphy says, pushing Miller away. “I’ve slept with at least twice as many women as the _noble Sir Gawaint_ of the tale.”

Bellamy just shoots him a glare, though there’s hardly any heat behind it. “You know you’re supposed to be a model for behavior, right? Or did you have your fingers crossed behind your back when you took an oath of chivalry?”

“The second option,” he says with a smirk. “Obviously.”

Octavia laughs loudly from beside him, tucked into Lincoln’s side. “Relax, Bell. It’s not Murphy’s fault you have a stick wedged so far up your royal—”

Lincoln puts his hand quickly over her mouth before she can do any more damage — at least in public. It’s not like anyone in the palace would be surprised by such talk, but there’s a certain level of decorum expected anywhere else.

“Oh, shut up. I can have fun.”

Murphy wiggles his eyebrows.

“All the princesses in the world are literally at your fingertips and you’re still unmarried. And I’d get the reluctance if you were banging every bawdy broad in town, but somehow I know you aren’t.”

Bellamy just rolls his eyes, not even willing to go into all the things wrong with Murphy’s choice of words.

“I’m twenty-nine, not dead. There’s time enough for marriage and babies.”

“Sure there is,” Miller says, slapping him on the shoulder. It was probably meant to be reassuring, but it comes across as patronizing, even if Miller of all people should know that Bellamy’s oath not to sire bastard children hasn’t kept him from sex entirely. 

Still, Bellamy just laughs with them, hardly having it in himself to care. It’s not like he wants to get married in the first place — when he does, it’ll be a duty like any other. There is no love match to be found among the courts of Albion.

“I think it’s great,” Murphy says, a huge smile on his face. “I for one look forward to Octavia’s eventual chaotic stint on the throne.”

She throws her head back in laughter. “Yeah, like _I_ could ever handle the horrible realities of being queen. I’ve seen the shit he deals with everyday. No thanks.”

But Murphy just shrugs, smiling still. “Someone else then. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Bellamy nudges his sister with his elbow. “I’m just gonna make O’s future kid do it. Then I can be the bachelor king until I’m dead.”

She scrunches up her nose in distaste. “No thanks — make your own.”

Finn looks at them in complete awe and confusion. “No offense, but you are the weirdest nobles of all time. Any other family would be fighting over who the next in line is, and you both can’t seem to pawn it off quick enough.”

Finn, Bellamy knows, speaks from experience. He’d convinced his father to disown his older brother just so he could be the heir to their family’s title. Bellamy isn’t sure if that’s strictly honorable, but it’s not his place to get involved in family dynamics unless they bring the case before him, so he’s washed his hands of the whole affair.

“People only want to be king until they are king,” Octavia says with a teasing tone, although everyone knows she means it sincerely. “Once they get it, they realize how terrible it really is. All that responsibility, and all of those people to please.”

“Bit melodramatic, O,” he says, though he agrees with her. Still, he doesn’t want people to feel _bad_ for him — that would be ridiculous. There are thousands of people who deserve pity, and he isn’t among them. His life isn’t perfect, but he knows he’s luckier than most.

“I don’t think I’d ever want to be a king,” Atom says after polishing off his tankard. “Too much work. At least being a knight keeps the days interesting.”

“Nah, you’re just too lazy, mate,” Wick says from beside him.

“Me either,” Miller adds in. “Not because it’s too much work, but because I’m better as Bellamy’s second in command.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says, shoving him playfully. “You just want me to be the bad guy every time there’s a hard decision to make.”

“Well obviously.”

“I could do it,” Murphy says, all brash bravado. “Be king. I’d look _excellent_ in a crown.”

Miller leans closer to Bellamy, whispering loudly in his ear. “Watch out. This one’s gonna be planning treason next.”

Bellamy snorts. “It’s fine. Murphy knows I have an executioner on retainer should I have need of his services.”

(He never makes use of the executioner. He can’t fathom being that kind of king. People are put in prison, sure, but he doesn’t like the idea of killing someone as a means of justice. 

Still, the presence of an executioner on the payroll does a lot to ward off the worst potential offenders.)

“Nah,” Murphy smiles, looking smug and drunk. “If I was coming for King Arthur’s crown, he’d never see it coming.”

“Good luck with that,” he says, rolling his eyes at his friend’s antics. Murphy’s always been a sarcastic little shit.

Lincoln shoves him towards the bar. “Next round of drinks is on Sir Murphy for making us put up with the fantasy world he lives in.”

The others laugh, and Bellamy looks around at the merry smiles on their faces.

It’s one of the best birthdays he can remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can prompt your own fics, art, video edits, etc by checking out The 100 Fic for BLM's [carrd](https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co/).
> 
> Follow me on twitter @andiebwrites, and please leave a review to let me know what you thought!


	3. Chapter 3

The next time Clarke sees him, he jumps off Hengroen’s back as quickly as he can. He marches over to her and envelops her in a hug before she even gets the chance to greet him. Smiling, she rests her head against his shoulder, overjoyed after an absence of several weeks to be seeing him again.

“Sword?”

“Nope.”

The question is a matter of routine at this point. He no longer pretends that he’s coming for the sword with any sincerity, not wanting to have to think up an excuse for needing it each time he visits. And she never entertains the idea that it’s something he could ever have. That’s not what their relationship is about after so many years.

He breathes out gently against the side of her head, clearly not eager to pull away. She doesn’t mind, melting further into him.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to be away for so long. Essetir and Caerleon both sent diplomatic envoys after my birthday, and they each conveniently included a princess or two. It took a while to send them off again.”

“It’s fine. I know you’re busy.”

“Yeah, but I’d rather be spending my time here. I don’t like to think of you spending so much time alone.”

She laughs lightly, finally pulling back to look at his face. “Bellamy, I’ve spent long enough alone to be used to it by now. I can manage a few weeks if required.”

What she doesn’t say, of course, is that it’ll only get worse from here. One day, whether he likes it or not, he will marry one of those foreign princesses and have a queen and heirs to add to his busy schedule. He won’t have time to sneak away to visit his local ensorcelled lake dweller.

She doubts any wife would appreciate that. Being put aside for a mistress is already bad enough — terribly common as it is — but it doesn’t help that Clarke is nothing in comparison to any woman regal enough to become the queen of Camelot. It would be an insult for Bellamy to continue spending so much time away with her, even if no one knows the exact details of what he does when he’s gone.

“I know you can manage. You’re much stronger than I am. But I’d rather not put you in the position where you have to manage in the first place. Not if I can help it.”

She steps away, pulling on his hand to drag him to their customary place at the side of the lake to sit.

“You won’t be able to help it forever, but I understand.” He opens his mouth to again refute her, but she just squeezes his hand. “How was your birthday celebration?”

“It was fine. We had a feast with the whole court as is customary. Bards, jesters, the whole circus really. And then I spent some time out with the knights later. Probably as close to normal as I’ll ever get.”

“Well, I’m glad. Twenty-nine seems like a big year. Everyone will be calling you an old man when the next one rolls around, so you should enjoy this while it lasts.”

He laughs, pulling her down to lay beside him, only a bit of grass separating their bodies. She can almost feel the heat of his skin on hers, and she aches to reach out across the distance.

“And how old are you, my lady?”

“Far too old for you,” she jokes, eyes sparkling.

She knows how it looks to him — she must only appear, at best, twenty-five or so. But she’s also appeared this same age since the day of his first visit, just before his eighteenth birthday.

She’ll still look twenty-five when he’s eighty. She’ll still look twenty-five when he’s dead and burned to ashes.

She sighs quietly. “Definitely too old for you.”

He pushes her hair back behind her ear.

“You never talk about yourself. Or your age, or how you got here.”

“It’s not my favorite story. And anyways, how do you know I haven’t always been here, as old as the earth and the seas? Maybe I’ve always been guarding this lake.”

“If you tell me that you’re the goddess of this lake, an immortal naiad or a siren sent to destroy the vain men who bother her, I’ll believe you. But you once said that you would never have the chance for vengeance, so I don’t think you sprung into existence as a primordial being.”

She smiles sadly. “I didn’t.”

“You don’t have to tell me. But I’ll listen if you ever want to. I suspect you don’t often have the chance to be unburdened.”

She turns over, looking away from him and towards the sky again. It’s daytime, the clouds aimlessly drifting across the wide expanse of blue above them. She wishes she could follow them on their travels.

“I really am far too old for you.”

“I didn’t assume you were kidding. But I also don’t care, so don’t let that be a deterrent.”

“What year did your book give you for the creation of Excalibur?”

“Oh, you mean the sword you insist isn’t real?”

She turns to glare at him, though there’s no heat behind it. Excalibur is a joke between them at this point.

“Just tell me.”

“I don’t recall it listing a date. It just said it happened during the first king of Camelot’s reign.”

“Camelot was first united some two hundred and fifty years ago, give or take. The first Pendragon king and his court sorcerer Merlyn brought the lands under one crown, taking over from feuding warlords.”

“And you were there for that?”

“No,” she laughs. “Not quite. At least not in the earliest days. The king lived a long life, reign bolstered by Merlyn’s impressive powers over nature and magic. I don’t think Camelot would be what it is today without his influence.”

“But magic has never been that strong. It’s the work of hedge witches at best, isn’t it?”

She raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “Didn’t your father lay a curse using the skills of a ‘hedge witch at best’?”

“Okay, fair. Continue.”

“You’re right to some degree though. Magic isn’t as strong today as it was then. Merlyn held a lot of power in the world through his skill, and he trained apprentices to follow in his footsteps after he was gone, needing to know that magic would always serve the kings and queens of Camelot. He was very devoted to the cause — to the kingdom.”

She smiles wanly. “I was born towards the end of the king’s reign, who was by that point steadily declining in health but still beloved by his people. And as I came of age, the daughter of an apothecary in the lower town, I came to know one of Merlyn’s apprentices.”

She expects him to say something about her age — she’s bound to be nearing two hundred or so. It’s laughable compared to his scant twenty-nine years on earth. But naturally he doesn’t focus on that detail at all.

“Oh?” He asks curiously. “What was that like? Being around so much magic used freely. I honestly can’t picture it now.”

She shrugs. “I suppose everyone was used to it back then. No one was as powerful as Merlyn, but he was always the exception. Others could do smaller things, and having magic-users in an army was as commonplace as having knights on horseback. It was expected — the way warfare worked no matter which kingdom you were defending.

“Merlyn died not long after I’d come of age, and his apprentices took up most of his work. There were only a few of them — four or five at most — but they were the most powerful magicians left now that their teacher was gone.

“One of them began to visit me when she was free, claiming to need remedies or ingredients for potions. Apothecaries’ tonics have a lot of crossover with the things required to cast enchantments, so I assume she just thought it was easier to buy them from me than to go out into the forest herself to scavenge for them.”

She pauses, worrying her lip between her teeth. She realizes that she’s never told this story to anyone — has never had reason to relive it in its entirety.

“What was she called?” He asks, drawing her back to the present.

“Her name was Lexa. She was… very proud. And very stubborn. She knew she was one of the brightest and best among the magic-users of Camelot. Even within Merlyn’s elite group, she was arguably the most skilled sorceress. But she was always kind during her visits, telling me about the excitement of courtlife and the work she was doing on behalf of the kingdom. And I started to look forward to the days where she would make purchases.”

She furrows her brow, realizing for the first time that she’s always been the person made to wait. She waited for Lexa’s visits then, and she waits for Bellamy’s now.

She doesn’t like the parallel much, even if it’s true.

“Anyway, eventually we…”

She looks over at him again, smirking slightly.

“Sorry, this may offend your delicate sensibilities, but—”

“You were lovers,” he says, rolling his eyes with a smile. “I’m not a child, Clarke. I know how it works.”

“I know, but you’re just so _noble._ I don’t want to poison your ears with the carnal indecencies of the world.”

“Just because I won’t do anything that would put a woman’s reputation at risk doesn’t mean I have no experience. Have no fear for my delicate constitution.”

“Okay,” she grins. “We were lovers. Not often, but enough that I came to truly care for her. Love her, even. We couldn’t be together frequently with how busy we both were, but it was enough. It was good.”

“But?” He asks when she stops again. “There’s always a but.”

“But I made the mistake of wishing for things that aren’t wise to wish for.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know how sometimes, without any thought at all, you’ll wish to gorge yourself with food until you explode or that you could kill someone in the heat of an argument or whatever? It was one of those situations.”

He stares at her, face grave. “And what did you wish for?”

“We were talking about the king’s ever-declining health. He was so old at that point, and it was the only thing anyone ever really spoke of anymore. And that’s when I jokingly made the comment that I wanted to live forever.”

“But you’re… not magic? I’m assuming, based on the story so far. Unless—”

“No,” she smiles. “I’m not magic. Or, I guess I am a little magical now, but only because of the lake. That’s a separate thing though. I wasn’t born with magic.”

“So then what was the problem with saying you wanted to live forever? It’s not like you could’ve cursed yourself.”

“I probably shouldn’t have spoken the words into the universe in the first place. Bad luck, really. But it was less to do with curses and more to do with my company.”

She pauses, and he takes a moment to think on her words, eyes flicking back and forth before they go wide in realization.

 _“Lexa_ did this to you?! The woman you were in love with?”

“In the aftermath of the king’s inevitable death, there was a period of some chaos. He’d been so loved by the people, and his continued existence held together a fragile peace. But his sons weren’t quite the man he was, and though he’d named his successor before dying, there was always a bit of turbulence in those days when the crown passed from one head to the next. It was the easiest time for the other sons or anyone who was particularly ambitious to try to sneak in and steal power. So there was a lot going on at the time.”

“How does that relate to you?”

“Lexa… she was ambitious. And proud, like I said earlier. She liked the idea of using the chaos to further her own ends. It would be a time when no one was looking at her, all too focused on the in-fighting at the center of court. So she started doing some darker magic.

“It’s hard to explain, especially now that you’re so far removed from the days when magic was widespread, but she started… tying the land’s magic to herself, I guess. Making sacrifices and doing incantations that Merlyn would’ve never permitted so she could start pulling magic directly from the places it naturally sprung from in the earth.

“I said that no one was as strong as Merlyn, and that was true. He was the only person to ever have such a natural affinity to the sources of magic. But Lexa grew more powerful each time she did this, knotting the magic that sprung forth from these holy places to her being, pulling it along with her wherever she went. It was destructive though, and it meant others couldn’t use their own magic as easily. The stronger she became, the weaker every other sorcerer was. And that’s exactly what she’d been hoping for. It unbalanced everything.”

“Fuck,” he says quietly, listening raptly to her words.

“But there was one place she couldn’t tie herself to; not if she didn’t want to be stuck forever.”

“This lake?” He asks confusedly, brows furrowing. “Why would anyone want it so badly? It doesn’t strike me as being a particularly important prize.”

“Don’t you know what this lake is called?”

“I— Of course. The Lake of Avalon. It was in the book.”

“Oh, you must be able to put two and two together then,” she says in frustration. “You know what Avalon is.”

He scowls at her lightly. “I know what Avalon is, but that’s a children’s story, isn’t it? The isle where the dead go to after they’ve been burned. We say it to ease grief and to make what happens next more comprehensible to those who have never experienced it, but it’s not a real, tangible place.”

She waits a second, hoping he’ll catch up.

“Wait. You’re telling me…”

“That the lake which magically appears whenever you need it is the same intangible place that children think the dead go to?”

“So it’s… real? It’s out there beyond the fog?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been there? Seen it?”

“A little, sometimes. From a distance and through the fog. I’d never want to walk the Isle of Avalon properly though. Too many ghosts.”

“Figuratively or…?”

She smiles sadly. “I don’t know. I don’t intend to ever find out.”

“So Lexa wanted to tie this place — this spot between living and dead — to something, but she didn’t want it to be herself?”

“Yes. There’s a prophecy about the watchers of those who cross over the lake. Someone must always be here to witness their journeys until such a time comes that a ghost from Avalon crosses over again to the land of the living.”

“But they never come back?”

“No. Of course not. The dead don’t come back. It’s the kind of prophecy that they don’t intend to ever see fulfilled.”

“And so she made you do it? Be the person to guard the lake?”

“I think, in some twisted part of her head, that she considered it a favor to me. She needed someone to stand at the lake’s side without literally tying herself here. And I told her that I never wanted to die — that I feared what would come at the end. Now I don’t have the choice to ever leave this world the way we’re meant to.”

“Not unless you trapped someone else here in your place,” he whispers forlornly.

She shakes her head. “I never would. The last person who was here — the one that I replaced… He was called Wells. And he was so tired. Hundreds and hundreds of years of only this.”

“And now he’s…?”

“Dead. Turned to dust when Lexa tied me here in his stead. His soul was the first one I watched cross to the isle.”

“And Lexa? What became of her?”

“She made powerful enemies. Not as powerful as she was, certainly, but their numbers gave them strength. She had a few years virtually unchallenged, and everyone knew that the new king answered to _her_ rather than the other way around. But that couldn’t last — not forever.”

“Eventually those she’d hurt came back to haunt her,” he says.

“Yes. And she’d amassed many enemies. They couldn’t fight her individually, but they came together to cast a complicated spell that would turn all of her charms against her. Her own strength was then her greatest weakness, and every time she used her magic against others, it slowly destroyed her, piece by piece. It didn’t take long from there for her to die, strangled by her own abilities.”

“And what of her magic?”

Clarke sighs. “She’d tied so much of the world’s magical resources to herself by that point, and when she died… it got ripped away with her. The holy places became barren; even flowers and grasses could no longer grow there. Places that were once springs of magical energy dried up completely.”

“And that’s why…? She’s the reason magic is so rare these days?”

“Apparently it only takes one rogue high priestess to destroy the foundations of magic completely if she’s greedy and determined enough.”

She can see that her words have left him stunned. What Lexa’s done to the world, to _Clarke…_

He’s exactly the kind of person who would find that level of gluttony repugnant. Bellamy, even with all his wealth and privilege, has never been one to hoard. He gives generously and always aims to put his people first.

“I got to watch her soul pass over, too,” she says, a whisper of a smile crossing her face. “It’s the only vengeance I’ll ever get. But it did feel pretty good in that moment.”

“I’m sure,” he mumbles out. Then, “I’m sorry. That she did that. That she’s resting and you… can’t.”

“Who knows?” She says with a laugh, the sound weak enough that he knows she’s only doing so for his benefit. “Maybe someday someone will actually come back.”

“I’ll come back.”

“No you won’t.”

“I will. When I die, I’ll find a way to come back to you. Cross over the lake and meet you here, exactly as we always do. And then you’ll be free. You’ll turn to dust, and I’ll take your hand as we go back towards Avalon together.”

“Don’t get my hopes up, Bellamy. I shouldn’t have made the joke. No one comes back, and I don’t think it’s for lack of trying. Plenty of people aren’t ready to cross over when they do, and they still never return.”

“It only has to happen once. And I’m telling you that it’ll be me. I won’t leave you here forever. I can’t. I’d never be at peace that way.”

He takes her hand, almost begging her to believe in him. His palm is calloused and weathered but so, so warm against hers.

She doesn’t know if she can; doesn’t know if she is willing to set herself up for that kind of disappointment. It’ll be hard enough when he dies to know that she’ll never again enjoy one of his visits — never hear his laugh or see one of his smiles. To add on the pain of hoping that he’ll free her, only to find that he never comes...

“Okay,” she says finally, though it’s more resigned than accepting.

“Okay. You don’t have to believe me now. But I swear I will see it done.”

He moves forward, pressing his lips to her cheek chastely. The motion sends a shiver down her back, making her want to pull him closer still. 

She doesn’t.

He’s kissed her three times in the years she’s known him, the only kisses she’s received in centuries, and she has catalogued them all. Once on her hand, like a lady in a story being wooed by the knight. Once on her forehead, when he was saying goodbye, almost a prayer to the universe to be able to stay longer. And now…

There are lines that the universe will never let them cross. They can never be the thing the other needs, no matter how much they want to.

***

Bellamy spends much of his time thinking about Clarke’s words. About the ghosts that arrive on her shores, giving her little pieces of information on the kingdom and it’s prosperities in the final moments before they cross over to Avalon.

He thinks of how he’s her only visitor; the only person who can find the little lake she’s been cursed to watch for two hundred years.

He doesn’t want to die — certainly isn’t trying to hasten the inevitable along — but there’s a strange part of him that’s almost _anxious_ for the moment when he will get to do this one thing for her. It’s the only gift anyone can ever truly grant her, and he wants to be the one to do it.

One day, he reminds himself. One day, he will be the one to return. He swears the oath privately to himself, holding onto it like a talisman.

But for now, he will do his duty. He will be the king his people require.

As the weeks and months pass by, he starts sending out his knights on more ambitious journeys, knowing that they are more than capable of proving themselves up to the tasks.

Miller gets into a year-long standoff with a knight from another kingdom dressed all in green, which almost turns into disastrous beheading but thankfully doesn’t. Lincoln and Octavia get sent to recover the so-called _holy grail,_ though when they bring it back, it doesn’t quite live up to its own myths. Still, though it can’t grant eternal life — which Bellamy would’ve been wary about unleashing anyhow — it does seem to infuse some healing magic into tonics meant to cure the sick, so it’s not a wasted journey.

The others argue over chances to go out and make names for themselves in the annals of time, wanting to be remembered for their own heroic quests. He tries to give them each a chance for glory, but it mostly depends on how much he can trust them to behave for weeks or months at a time without his glares to keep them in line.

Which means that people like Miller get a lot of chances, and people like Murphy do not.

Murphy rolls his eyes each time he isn’t chosen to do some harrowing task, saying that he prefers the comforts of his bed, his ale, and the women he can seduce here in the city anyhow.

“Life on the road doesn’t agree with me,” he says after he isn’t picked to go after the Questing Beast (which, Bellamy feels certain, is probably just a large but otherwise completely normal animal causing havoc in the countryside villages).

“Sure,” Bellamy says, patting him on the back. “I need you here anyway. There’s a lot to do.” Then, more seriously, he looks him in the eye, hand on his shoulder reassuringly. “But if you ever did want to go, I would allow you. You’re more than able to defeat any foe, magical or otherwise, in combat. There has never been doubt in that. I only need to know that you won’t get up to any mischief while you’re away. You know how you are.”

Murphy just smiles. “I can’t make any promises.”

The knights sometimes make jokes about the lack of Bellamy’s own quests, having heard rumors and stories about the famed Excalibur, which they find incredibly romantic. A sword that can only be found and wielded by the worthiest among them.

“You know, if you ever wanted to travel for a while and try to find the lake, we would keep things in line here while you’re gone,” Miller says seriously, nodding to Lincoln, Shaw, and the others.

“I know you would. You all do a great job when I am away visiting the other kingdoms or on extended hunts. I trust you all completely. But I have no desire to seek out the sword.”

“Really?” Octavia asks, surprise lacing the words. “Why not? Who couldn’t use a sword that always hits its mark?”

He smiles at her softly. “It’s a nice idea, but I don’t think it’s worth pursuing. If I’m meant to find it, I think it’ll happen naturally. And if it doesn’t, well… Then I suppose it’s a quest for a more worthy knight.”

They all look at him skeptically, wondering if there truly could be a worthier knight than Bellamy. If anyone is going to find Excalibur, it would be him.

***

The kingdom experiences a bountiful harvest that year, the continuation of the prosperous era under the reign of King Arthur Bellamy. The people praise his good nature and fair leadership, happy to be led by a gracious ruler unlike those that govern the neighboring kingdoms. 

The people rejoice each time that the knights come back from another successful quest, and the small bits of magic they are able to recover do much to bolster the public’s view of the Round Table’s work.

On his thirtieth birthday, the people celebrate boisterously. The day marks thirty years since the tyrant king Uther Pendragon died, ushering in first the regency under Marcus and then Bellamy’s own reign. A whole generation of people have grown up in these plentiful years, never knowing the realities of the hardship that came before.

It’s on that day, though he won’t hear of it himself for some time, that they begin whispering about him as _the once and future king._ The man who revitalized Camelot, who returned the inklings of magic left to the castle, using them for the health and wellbeing of his people. They admire him, and in that he becomes something beyond human.

Not quite divine, but close.

When he hears the nickname weeks after it’s first uttered, he laughs, thinking it sweet and silly in equal measure. He’s glad to have become the kind of king he’d always dreamed could be real — the kind he weaved into the fabric of his childhood stories. 

But he’s only the king _now,_ without any regard for _and future._ When he’s dead, the mantle will have to be passed to someone else, and all anyone can do is hope that his successor is as dedicated to the public good as he.

There is no future life for him. When he dies, it’ll be enough just to cross back over for a moment — just long enough to pull Clarke over with him. There won’t be anything after that.

But the stories of _Arthur, the Once and Future King_ continue, spreading though his kingdom and across the world.

***

The days that Clarke spends alone — most days, really — pass in the same haze. 

She sees the ghosts in the water, afraid or confused about what is happening.

Technically she doesn’t need to help them — the process is self-explanatory and it’s the only one available to them anyway, so it’s not like they can get out of it if she isn’t diligent. _Guarding_ the lake of Avalon is more a ceremonial role than something she’s forced to take seriously.

If she was tasked with helping each and every individual crossover, she can’t even imagine the chaos that would come to her during and after any battles.

But still, some of them panic, not fully able to process their own deaths, and it’s easier for everyone if she can talk them through it when she has the time to do so.

In return, most of them are happy to tell her a little bit about the worlds they’re leaving behind — which kingdoms they’re from, how the people are doing, if anything major has happened recently. 

It’s as close to existing in the outside world as she’ll ever get. A little taste of real life — the life that she was ripped away from her all those years ago.

She hears, in the interim between Bellamy’s visits, of the good works being done by King Arthur, a man unlike any ruler in the kingdoms of Albion.

Each time they bring him up with an unprompted sincerity, she can’t help but smile. Of course he would be helping his people. Of course he would be doing things that, even in death, people still want to talk about. He’s always been exactly that kind of leader. Endlessly devoted to doing better.

She often goes many weeks at a time between his visits, and it’s these reassurances by the newly deceased that remind her why it’s worth it to live in two separate worlds. He could never truly be happy wasting away as she does by her lake. One day, unlike her, he will grow old and die. It’s better that he makes use of his limited time here by helping who he can and paving the way for the continuation of good leadership once he’s gone.

But that doesn’t stop her, every now and then in the dead of night, from dreaming about what it would be like to spend each day with him. To be happy and loved and together.

Each day, when morning comes and the sunlight bounces off of the lake, she reminds herself why that can’t be. 

And the cycle repeats.

***

It takes nearly two years for Bellamy to discover who began the rumors of the _once and future king._

In that time, he hears the phrase uttered under people’s breaths or when they think he’s not around near-constantly. 

None of the knights use it, of course — they know him far too well to think there’s anything ethereal or eternal about him. But everyone else seems to have adopted it. He doesn’t know if they’ve done so as a joke, or out of a sense of hope for the future, or just because there’s nothing else to talk about in peacetime.

But as the phrase spreads and becomes more ubiquitously known, he worries that he’s let it go too far. He isn’t a miracle worker, and everyone is starting to blow the whole thing out of proportion.

***

The druids, a peaceful people who incorporate magic into their worship of the Old Gods, had been banned from forming any kind of settlement in Camelot for many years. When magic had fallen out of fashion, sorcerers no longer being welcomed among the ranks of knights and soldiers, druids had been persecuted as well. The more people began to believe that magic had never truly existed beyond simple joke-spells, the more they saw the druids as something else — something frightening and other.

Bellamy, in his efforts to retrieve the bits of magic left in the world, had also extended the hand of friendship to the druids in hiding, welcoming them formally back as citizens of Camelot if it pleased them to do so. He and the knights helped them build their first proper settlement within the kingdom’s borders, and they’ve been trying to reconnect with the community and their leadership in a way that will both change public opinion and atone for past wrongs.

All of this is to say that hosting Gabriel Santiago, one of the elders of the druidic sect they’ve begun welcoming back, is a big deal diplomatically.

“The honor is mine, Your Highness,” Gabriel says in response to Bellamy’s effusive welcome. “The druids here and in distant lands know of the work being done on our behalf by the Once and Future King, and we are grateful to be once again on the same side.”

Bellamy just smiles, offering for Gabriel to join him at the head table for the evening’s feast.

It’s not until they’re sitting together and sharing a pitcher of wine that Bellamy finally manages to ask, “So how did you hear that silly name? The once and future king?” He smiles self-consciously. “I’d not put too much faith in it, if I were you. It leaves quite a lot of room for disappointment.”

Gabriel looks at him seriously, eyes seeing far more than Bellamy would like to show. “I don’t consider it a silly name at all, Your Highness. And we didn’t have to hear about it from anyone. We predicted it.”

“You… what? The druids started those rumors?”

“If you consider them rumors, then I suppose we did. But we would call it a prophecy, not a rumor.”

Bellamy doesn’t want to be rude — he knows that their foreign traditions aren’t something that he’ll ever entirely understand, and that’s okay — but he can’t entirely avoid the thought of someone _scrying_ for this information or seeing it in the rough-hewn faces of crystals, and it feels almost funny. Even as a king, as someone who directly affects the lives of all of his people, he still is hardly important enough to warrant these kinds of prophetic words. Plenty of average people become leaders. There is nothing extraordinary about him.

“I don’t know that I can live up to such hopes,” he says earnestly. “You might be giving me too much credit.”

Gabriel smiles at him. “Prophecies always come to pass in one way or another, even if it’s a less literal form than we’d thought. Have heart, Highness. It might happen in a way that none of us expects. But there’s one thing I’m certain of: The Once and Future King will return when the world has need of him.”

Bellamy thinks of his goal — to come back long enough to bring Clarke over to Avalon, the process of which would finally allow her to die. He’d dismissed the idea being tied to the rumors before, thinking the title _once and future_ only some silly creation of a bored mind. But if it’s bound to be true in one form or another, then maybe he really can pull it off. 

Maybe he can help her, after so many years of letting her help him.

He laughs, the sound hopeful and joyous, before patting Gabriel on the shoulder. 

“You know, you should really call me Bellamy.”

When Gabriel leaves a few days later, Bellamy is filled with a renewed hope. 

***

Princess Guinevere Octavia and Sir Lincoln Lance are married just over a week before Bellamy’s thirty-third birthday.

Bellamy, in his capacity as king, performs the wedding. It is on the same day, in the glow of love and light coming from the bride and groom, that he names Octavia and any of her future children as his heirs to the throne. Though it had always been understood to be the case, he is glad to have the issue formally resolved, especially as he has no plans to be married himself. Seeing Octavia this happy is enough for him, and there is no entirely mortal woman who could ever draw his eye.

Octavia grins as he says the words making her the next in line. She has, under the teachings of Marcus, Indra, and Bellamy himself, grown into a strong warrior and a caring individual. He trusts that she and Lincoln will do what’s best for the people if and when he’s no longer around to perform his duties.

***

Three days after the wedding, with the feelings of mirth and laughter still fresh in everyone’s minds, they receive news from the knights stationed on their northern border.

The Saxon army is marching unimpeded through Essetir, with Essetir’s king making no efforts to stop them.

They’re marching straight towards Camelot.

***

Admittedly, Bellamy doesn’t know all that much about the Saxons.

They’re not a kingdom that Camelot shares a border with, and as such they don’t trade as frequently with the Saxon people.

But the Saxons have always been envious of Camelot’s lands, which have better opportunities for farming due to the warmer climates than what they receive in the north.

Every few decades the Saxons start acting up, wanting to take land from their neighbors further south, though usually they end up being small border disputes, hoping to steal away better tracks of land bit by bit from the others. Since Camelot doesn’t have a border with the Saxons, it’s never been an issue they’ve faced personally, though occasionally the kings of Camelot have chosen to help their neighbors to defend their territories in return for the privileges of friendship between the two lands.

The Saxons have never staged a direct attack on Camelot.

He wonders if that’s the deal Essetir had made: in return for letting the Saxons march through their lands unimpeded, the Saxons wouldn’t bother them at all this time around. Essetir was one of the kingdoms slowly being eaten away at by the warrior land they bordered, and this kind of deal could serve as a boon for them, however temporary.

He wonders, too, if the king of Essetir realizes that a Saxon victory in Camelot would put his own lands directly between two Saxon strongholds. He doubts Essetir would survive an assault from both sides.

When the members of the Round Table hear of the news, they all share in his shock. They’ve never considered the Saxons to be their enemy, and though they always try to be ready for a future attack, so many years without war has made it easy to think the day would never come.

“Maybe they knew you didn’t have an official heir,” Lincoln says calmly, sitting beside Octavia at their meeting. “And they thought they could come, wage war, and then use the chaos in the aftermath to take over. Even if they didn’t technically win the battle, killing a king with no obvious heir would have sent us into a tailspin. It wouldn’t be hard to use that to their advantage.”

Bellamy looks at him in confusion. “But I just named Octavia my heir at your wedding _three days ago._ Before that, there were thirty-two years without an heir. Why attack now? They wasted a long period in which they easily could’ve made use of the lack of a formalized line of succession only to come when it’s too late.”

Miller squirms in his seat uncomfortably before looking over to the king. “Maybe someone tipped them off that you were finally naming an heir, and they had hoped to get here before it was made official. It takes time to mobilize and move an army. The Saxon lands in the north aren’t close.”

“But nobody knew that I was using the wedding to name a formal heir. Nobody except… the Round Table.” He immediately casts his gaze over each of them one by one, waiting to see if someone glances away.

He’s never not trusted these people. They’ve had his faith in them from the moment they were given seats at this table, elite even among the knights of Camelot.

Many of them — most of them, really — he’d even made knights against the former laws of the land. Few of them were titled lords. They’d been given this chance specifically because he had so much faith in their loyalty to Camelot.

But if Miller and Lincoln are right…

If they’re right, someone has sold out Camelot and all of her people to the Saxons.

He sighs.

“I don’t want to start questioning everyone here when we can’t be certain they’re coming now because of the succession. For all we know, the timing is a coincidence. And anyways, the succession is secure now, so should the worst happen, there won’t be chaos.”

“News spreads slowly,” Miller says, still speaking carefully, not wanting to create a panic among the knights about a potential traitor being in their ranks. “Even if you’ve made Octavia the legal heir, if people throughout the kingdom don’t know that yet, there will still be pandemonium if you die. They would only need a moment of uncertainty to steal power out from under us.”

“And if Octavia fights, they could easily make her a target, too. She is your heir, along with any kids she may one day have. But neither of you has children for the moment. It would be easy enough to target you both on the battlefield if it comes to a fight.”

The solution, of course, is that Octavia doesn’t fight. The king must — it’s part and parcel of the job. But the heir’s job is to stay alive at all costs in case they are needed.

But no one’s brave enough to be the one who tells Octavia to stay home. Not when there’s an army marching on her lands.

And a knight of the Round Table would’ve known that — could’ve factored Octavia’s stubbornness into the information given to the Saxons.

He rubs a hand over his tired face, worried that he’s already overthinking this. The Saxons don’t have to turn them against each other if they do that themselves.

“You might be right,” he says. “Or perhaps not. I don’t know enough yet to make a judgement on it. For now, we wait until we hear more from the knights on patrol. We can’t make a decision until we know as much as possible.”

“Bellamy,” Octavia says quietly, a current of worry in her voice. “We don’t have the stores required for a lengthy siege. Even with the summer’s harvest being as good as it was, we couldn’t feed everyone for a year or more.”

“I’d rather not let it become a siege.”

“So you want to fight?”

“If we rely on a siege, to force them away, we’ll be abandoning the outer villages. We won’t be able to relocate everyone into the city quickly enough. A siege is a last resort.”

“We’ll have to begin mobilizing soon then. So we’re ready to march at a moment’s notice,” Miller says.

If there’s one person at this table he trusts besides his sister, it’s Miller. They’ve grown up virtually side by side, and he knows that Miller could never be capable of conspiring against him.

“See that it’s done then. Personally.”

“Yes, Sire.”

The meeting adjourns, everyone looking more suspiciously at each other than they ever normally would.

Octavia pulls him aside, dragging him into what must be some kind of supply closet used by the servants.

“You said a few years ago that you weren’t going to look for Excalibur. That if you were meant to carry it, you’d find it in your own time.”

“Yes?”

She glares at him, annoyed, he assumes, that he’s being deliberately obtuse. “It’s a sword that always hits its target, Bell. We’re about to go to war. At the risk of stating the obvious, now might be the right time to at least make an attempt at uncovering it.”

“I don’t know where it is. We don’t have time for a side mission if the Saxon army is already in Essetir.”

She looks him up and down, lips pressed together in a tight line.

“I don’t believe you. You know where it is, which is why you’ve never been bothered to go looking. It’s why you’re always sneaking off, isn’t it?”

“I’m a king, O — I don’t sneak anywhere. I tell people to leave me the fuck alone when required, and they, unlike you, listen to me and do as I say.”

“You didn’t deny knowing where it was though.”

He sighs, too tired by the events of the day to keep this going.

“I know where it should be, okay? But I don’t know if it’s actually there, or if it’s even possible to find. It might be too late.”

Octavia looks like she wants to scream at him for _not looking for it earlier, idiot!_ but she wisely holds her tongue.

“I’ll look into it. Help Miller to get everything organized. There’s going to be a lot to do in a short period of time, and I need you to spearhead much of it. I can’t fully trust the others with anything logistical until we can rule out this traitor theory.”

“Where will you be?”

“Going to ask someone about a fucking sword.”

She nods, turning without a word to do her duty.

That’s the one nice thing about his sister being a knight — no matter how annoyed she might be at him and his potentially stupid decisions, she will always do what is necessary to help Camelot. They’re cut from the same cloth that way — raised to always put the kingdom first.

He hastens down the stone stairs and halls, running the maze that is his castle before he’s again at the stables.

He’s made this trip hundreds of times since the days before his eighteenth birthday. The journey and his destination are the only times he truly feels like a free man, unencumbered by his role in the world.

Not today, though.

The thought makes his stomach roll.

***

“Clarke, do you have the sword?”

“The sword?” She asks with a laugh. “Are we really back on that? You barely even remember to ask after it anymore.”

She expects to hear a laugh in return, but none comes, and when she looks up at him from where she’s sitting, he’s still astride Hengroen. The poor horse looks exhausted even from the relatively short ride it takes for her lake to appear in the woods before him.

It’s this detail, rather than Bellamy’s white knuckles on the reins or his tense face, that tips her off that this isn’t a normal visit.

“I need Excalibur, Clarke.”

“What’s happened?”

He sighs, wearily climbing off of his steed and leading the poor thing over to the trees to rest.

“Saxons marching south towards us.”

“Saxons?” She asks, completely confused by this. The shapes of the kingdoms have changed somewhat since she’s been stuck here, but she didn’t expect they’d changed so drastically. 

He smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Through Essetir. They must think they’re giving themselves more time to fight them by playing as friends for now.”

“That’s a terrible plan.”

“I know. But we’ll be telling them _I told you so_ from Avalon if we don’t manage to stop the invasion that’s already approaching.”

“And for that… you need…?”

“Excalibur.”

“You don’t…? Aren’t you the greatest swordsman in Camelot? Haven’t you been training your elite group of knights just for such a day?”

“I’ve been reminded that any battle will go over more easily with a sword that never misses.”

She pauses, looking at him nervously.

“But—”

“Are you telling me that it’s not here?” She gives no answer, face shifting too quickly between emotions for him to follow. “I know you always said it wasn’t, but I sort of assumed you were lying. If it’s not here — if it was true all along — then I’ll believe you. But if it’s here…”

“It’s—” she stops, swallowing heavily before looking over her shoulder at the lake. When she turns back to him, there’s a calm, stoic look on her face which wipes away the previous array of emotions. “There’s a sword here. You can’t get to it though — you’d never be able to retrieve it and make it back.”

She thinks of the sword — Excalibur, she has to assume, though she’s never seen it. Supposedly, upon the first king’s death, it had gone with him to Avalon, the sword being tied to him in life and in death. 

The other story, of course, is that, in the chaos of the king’s death, the succession crisis, and Lexa’s own growing power, a loyal member of Arturus I’s court had taken the sword under cover of knight to return it to the lake.

She doesn’t know which was true — hadn’t been forced into the role of guarding this place until after it was already gone, and there hadn’t been time to ask Wells before he’d finally been freed.

Bellamy closes his eyes for a moment, looking worn down. “So that’s it, then? The sword is real but I’ll never find it?”

Before he can say anything else defeatist, she closes the gap between them, faces only inches apart.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispers heavily, but there’s an undercurrent of worry in her voice.

She can’t lose him. She _can’t._ Not when he’s so young, barely thirty-three. Not when she will have to spend the remainder of eternity remembering these small moments of joy. The moments where he made her feel valued and loved.

She lets out a harsh breath, afraid to consider what this battle will bring. Her eyes screw up tight for a moment, and then, desperate to feel close to him, she tugs on his gabeson to bring his lips to hers.

His body stills against her. It only takes a moment for her to start worrying that she’s made the wrong move. It’s hardly the time, but she just—

Then he wraps his arms around her tightly, cradling her in against him while his lips move over hers. She breathes out raggedly between them, trying to pull him ever closer, one hand in the red fabric of the heavy, padded jacket and the other in his hair, wanting to keep his lips exactly where they are.

There’s a zing under her skin the entire time, like she’s alive again for the first time after all these years spent drowning, trying desperately to keep her head above water. She longs to anchor herself to him — to keep him here and never let him go. Not when there’s going to be a war; not when he’s the one they’ll be fighting to kill.

If she keeps him here, keeps kissing him as time passes around them without their notice, then maybe he’ll live. Maybe he won’t die the way that heroes always do.

But, like always, she knows he can’t stay. Knows that’s the reason she’s never allowed herself to kiss him before. Knows that’s why there’s always been a necessary distance between them. 

Because now that she’s touched him, even just for a moment, she knows it’ll be almost impossible to let him go.

So she steps back, her heels firmly on the ground again as his hold around her waist breaks.

He stares at her with a mystified expression, bewildered and awed, as though she’s the siren he had once joked about.

“I don’t— what?”

“You should go, Bellamy.” She smiles sadly, taking one of his hands in hers to squeeze tightly. Then she lets it go, watching as it hovers in the air between them, reaching out to her across a divide that is ever-widening. She can’t touch him if she’s to send him away. “They’re going to need you to get everything in order.”

He blinks at her, watching her face as though it might reveal the secrets of the universe somehow.

She continues, trying to give strength to her voice that she doesn’t feel. “Don’t worry about the sword. You can’t retrieve it. But if you come back before the battle, I’ll—”

The words get caught in her throat, but she forces them out anyway.

“I’ll get it for you, Bellamy. Don’t worry.”

He steps towards her again, raising his hand to let the backs of his fingers gently caress her cheek.

“Thank you. I… You don’t have to do this. If it’s too difficult. I don’t need the sword.”

She breaks eye contact, taking another step back. “Go home, Bellamy. I’ll get Excalibur for you. I promise.”

He nods once, a sheen of tears in his eyes.

Then he turns back to Hengroen, and the two of them depart before anything else can be said.

When Clarke turns around, the dense fog over the water seems to stare ominously back at her.

She looks down at her hand, frowning slightly at the silver and ruby dagger she’d managed to steal from his belt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed and you're ready for a quest and a battle!
> 
> Thanks for reading. If you have a moment, I'd love to hear what you thought or where you think it's going in a review below!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to go get a sword I guess???

For all that Clarke is the Lady of the Lake, spending much of her time in the water itself if for no other reason than boredom, she’s never had a reason to travel into the dense fog covering the other side.

The lake is massive, and as such she can fish and swim and bathe and play in the water without ever needing to get close to it. 

Once, when she’s been especially bored, she’s traveled just into the beginning of the fog, but she’s become so quickly disoriented in the seemingly endless haze that she didn’t attempt to stay long. Panicked, she instead turned around and swam the other direction as fast as she could, hoping that it was the way she had come in from. She feared that she’d gotten so turned about in the confusion that she was only managing to move further into its clutches. She might swim forever in that case, never finding the point where the sky and the trees were visible again.

The land beyond the fog was not for the living to touch, and by the loosest definition, she was still technically alive. So from that day on, whenever she watched a ghost cross over into the mist, she didn’t try to follow them. Not her mother. Not her friends. Certainly not Lexa.

Her side of the lake — the one that touched the lands of the living — was enough for her.

Now, as she stares out in the mass of swirling grey and white — the storm that perpetually shrouds what’s on the other side — she takes a deep breath, hoping that her courage will be enough.

(It’s the kind of vain, insane thought that all heroes think right before they do something that will lead to their downfall, and she’s not unaware of it. Like any truly good epic romance, though, she’s still stupid enough to try. She has to do it for him, because it’s the only way she can help. The only way this imprisonment doesn’t make her useless.)

It wouldn’t be wise to swim. She’ll never keep her bearings long enough to make it to the isle on the other side, and her heavy, waterlogged dress will only slow her down.

She walks along the lake, finding the skiff that sits on the grass just outside of the water’s reach. Honestly, she isn’t sure how it got here — maybe Wells had built it? — but she’s glad some divine force has given her even this small boon. In the past, she’s only used it a few times, having little reason to go boating, but today it is her only hope if she’s going to make it to the isle.

She drags the thing out into the water before climbing in, wishing, just for a moment, that she’d ever bothered to truly discover what was on the other side of the fog.

_ “I’d never want to walk the Isle of Avalon properly though. Too many ghosts.” _

_ “Figuratively or…?” _

_ “I don’t know. I don’t intend to ever find out.” _

She huffs out a laugh at the thought before grabbing the oars. With one in each hand, the repeated motion of rowing almost manages to calm her, the boat’s sway beneath her a gentle, relaxing feeling.

She travels slowly along the lake, watching the blue sky above her as she tries not to worry about where she’s heading. There’s no way to plan for this, which means there’s no use in worrying.

The worst they can do, she assumes, is kill her.

And then she’s swallowed by the fog, and her breath catches in her lungs.

There’s a sea of nothingness surrounding her, as though she’s trapped between one world and the next. Her arms continue their work, but though she can still feel the sway of the water beneath her, part of her is convinced she’s no longer moving at all. She will never reach the isle. The grey will continue on forever, becoming her interminable reality. It’s the price she will deserve to pay for being too greedy with her lot. She should’ve been happy with her simple, unending life instead of hoping for more. Hoping for usefulness. For a part in the narrative. 

She continues on for what feels like hours, the monotony spinning each second into an intricate web around her. Soon, certainly, she’ll be trapped in its clutches forever, prey on the island of death. There is a reason the living aren’t meant to traverse these waters.

Then, before she can fully comprehend what this mindlessness will do to her in the vacuum of eternity, the bottom of her boat scrapes along something beneath her — the gravelly edge of the other side of her lake.

She turns to look over her shoulder, frightened and awed by what she sees behind her.

Ruins, shrouded in a grey, consuming darkness, stand across the island, blocking her view of it’s size. She’d always supposed Avalon wouldn’t need to be very large — that the physical presence of the isle was more of a gateway to the intangibility of the afterlife. Now, without a clear picture of its totality, she wonders if she was wrong.

Carefully, she steps out of the boat, dragging it far enough onto the shore that it won’t disappear before she can return. She considers hiding it, but everyone on this land should be dead. There can be no escape for them from this land, boat or not.

At least in theory.

Walking carefully along the deadened grass, she makes her way through the stone ruins around her. An abandoned brazier flares to life beside her as she passes it, making her jump in alarm. The flames bounce around, fed from nothing. There is no kindling in the fire.

“Fuck.” She presses her hand to her heart in order to still it’s harsh beating. There shouldn’t be an imperative for silence, and yet she fears that her heart’s erratic patterns will somehow draw the spirits to her.

As she goes, sconces on the crumbling walls light up to follow her. She isn’t sure if she should be frightened or grateful as they illuminate what the sun cannot seem to touch.

A whoosh of air passes quickly behind her, and she turns immediately to follow it, but it’s already gone before there is anything to see. A faint, frightening sound of laughter is the only thing it leaves in its wake.

She continues walking, eyes sweeping the area nervously with each step.

Then, without warning, a second laugh, high pitched and terrifying, sweeps by her ear, the noise painful and disorienting. A maelstrom of similar voices are quick to follow, swirling around her with laughter and cries and haunting words all floating about in the air. She turns desperately to try to find a way out of the noise. Her hand unthinkingly goes to the dagger she’d stowed away in her belt, but she knows these kinds of enemies cannot be defeated by the sharp edge of a blade.

The voices — the spirits, surely — begin tearing at her, pulling her hair and tugging viciously at her dress. Thick red lines, like those that come from deep scratches, appear on the pale, bare skin of her arms one after the other. One goes so deep that blood wells up from it, and she looks at it in panic.

Putting her arms up in front of her face, she tries to run forward, needing to push through the eddy of ghosts, but the voices follow behind her endlessly. The sounds firm up, no longer satisfied with being indistinct noises.

“Clarke, you did this to us,” one hisses. It sounds suspiciously like the mother she hasn’t seen in nearly two centuries. The same woman who’d died, as far as Clarke knows, in the resulting purge against sorcerers that had come after Lexa’s downfall. Her mother hadn’t even practiced magic, but being a women practicing the art of healing had been enough for the angriest people in those days.

Then again, she isn’t certain on the particulars of her mother’s death. When Abigail Griffin had died, she hadn’t bothered to wait at the lakeside for instructions. Probably hadn’t wanted to speak with Clarke at all. And of course, Clarke had been too frightened by then to follow.

“You did this. You let this happen.”

She spins around, needing to chase away the various voices all echoing the same words. The people she’d known, perhaps. Or the people who had died as a result of her actions.

“Stop! I didn’t! I wasn’t trying to—!”

“It doesn’t  _ matter!” _ An angry voice shouts above the others. This one isn’t familiar to her, though she is afraid that her time spent in purgatory has simply wiped it from her memory. It’s been so long, and her own history is fading from her mind with each passing year. One day, she won’t remember any of these people, these voices who seek justice against her. “You did this to us. Our deaths are on you!”

“No!” She cries, trying again to push through them, desperate to be free of the voices’ endless flurrying. “Mother, please, I—”

Then a hand reaches out to her, the touch a faint whisper.

“Come on.” The voice, unlike all the rest, is quiet and calm, familiar only to a small part of the back of her mind. “I’ll help you. Just follow me.”

She closes her eyes, trying to block out her senses entirely as she follows the gentle pull of the hand in hers. The sounds continue circling around her for several steps, but after a while, they seem to fall back behind her, their shouts of anger and despair growing fainter in the distance.

“You’re okay,” says the new voice, and the phantom touch on her hand grows stronger for a moment, like it’s squeezing her own in comfort.

Finally, after a deep breath to steady her nerves, she opens her eyes.

For the first time since arriving on the isle, there is a visible spector to match the voice — a man standing before her, faint and only partially tangible, but still there nonetheless.

“Wells? You’re… you’re still here?”

He smiles, the look warm and welcoming. “Not really. Not always, anyway. This place is just the touchpoint between here and there. I don’t allow my grief and bitterness to keep me here the way some do. There are those who aren’t able to cross over, too tied to this realm and the injustices they believe they suffered here, and it means they never leave. They haunt the isle, desperate to be the one to fulfill the prophecy of a spirit who returns, and it drives them mad. But I came back for  _ you.” _

“Me? I— I don’t understand.”

“I knew you were coming for the sword,” he says easily. “And I thought you might need help.”

“I did,” she says gratefully, looking back over her shoulder to where they’d come from. They’re too deep into the ruins now to see the fog of the lake’s edge, but she knows they can’t be far. The voices are still somewhere behind her, wailing in misery. Perhaps they are tied to that single spot, wailing to whomever will listen. “You said… some people don’t cross over. Can’t cross over. Does that mean…?”

He looks at her, smiling sadly. “It wasn’t your mother, Clarke. She’s not here.”

“Not here on this side of the divide? Or… not here at all?”

“She’s somewhere, I suppose. Just as everyone who has passed is. But if you’re worried that you’ve doomed her to haunting these ruins for eternity, don’t. Those voices aren’t real.” He pauses, seeming to think over his previous words. “Well, they’re real enough, but not in the way you think. It wasn’t really your mother, just an imitation. Some of the souls who have been trapped here the longest begin to lose themselves entirely, instead becoming sadness and anger and regret itself. If you’d been someone else, they would’ve manifested different voices, pulling from you the things that linger in your mind and frighten you the most.”

She lets out a relieved breath, feeling some weight removed from her shoulders. She may never forgive herself for the ways in which her stupid actions hurt others, at least her mother isn’t trapped here, waiting for the opportunity to pick and pull apart the daughter who had failed her until there is nothing left but a clean skeleton.

“Okay. Okay. So if you’re here to help me, do you know where I…?”

He glances around, looking at the moss-covered stone walls falling apart around them.

“I don’t think I can take you all the way,” he says. “But I can get you close, and show you where to go from there.”

“Thank you, Wells. That’s already more than I could’ve hoped for.”

He nods before gesturing for her to grab one of the lit torches from a sconce.

“The fire will keep most spirits at bay,” he says with a smile. “Far better than your knife will, anyway. They don’t like the heat. Or the light.”

She laughs. “Good to know.”

She walks carefully beside him, mindful to keep the torch as far from him as possible. No sense accidentally sending him away as well — not when he’s been so helpful.

“Is it nice there?” She asks curiously. “On, you know… the other side or whatever. Avalon.”

He looks at her with a guarded expression, like he’s worried that his answer will displease her. “It’s better than guarding the lake. Less lonely.” He sighs as they walk, their feet following along a path of grass and, in some places, old, weathered cobblestone. “I’m sorry you got stuck there. I would’ve stayed if I could. If I hadn’t been released from my oath before anyone could stop her.”

She glances over at him. “No, you’d… You’d been trapped there for so long, Wells. You deserved peace.”

“I swore I’d never pawn the job off onto someone else. Not when I knew the cost of being stuck.”

“You didn’t pawn it off. You didn’t ask me to take it. We’d hardly been there more than a few moments before Lexa was saying the spell to change the bindings. You couldn’t have prevented it.” She swallows heavily, thinking of those horrible moments when she’d realized exactly what was happening. She’d been so stupidly in the dark before, blindly following Lexa wherever she led. Even now, two hundred years later, she could still feel the strange weight of the magic pressing against her, tying her down to that spot forever. “If there’s one thing I’m glad about, it’s that you were released. It was well past your time.”

“Will you ever do it?” He asks, trying to keep any judgment out of his voice. He is the only person she knows who has experienced the same pain and isolation that she has. Presumably someone came before him — someone who he released once upon a time — but it could’ve easily been a millennia or longer ago. “Tie someone there in your stead?”

“I’m not sure how much you see of me,” she starts, taking measured steps over the uneven ground. A spirit tries to fly directly at them, but she waves the torch back and forth in front of her face, warding it off before it can come too close. “You knew I was coming for the sword, so you must know something.”

He shakes his head. “Not really. I sensed the boat on the lake. In the mist. From there I made an educated guess.”

She laughs again. “Alright, that’s fair. There’s a man. One who visits the lake.”

“Visits? Visits  _ plural?” _

“Yes. He…” 

She pauses, thinking about Bellamy for a moment. Even after all these years, there are things about him that she still hasn’t thought to question.

“I don’t think he’s magic. And he wasn’t looking for the lake the first time. I think it… calls to him, somehow. If that makes any sense.”

Wells’s face lights up with a grin, as though suddenly they’re old ladies gossiping at the tailor’s or by the water pumps. “He’s called to the lake or he’s called to you?”

If he were corporeal, she'd probably elbow him. As it is, she can’t be certain it wouldn’t push him straight over the divide somehow, so she resists the urge.

“To the sword, I think. Which is why I need to get it.”

“You’re saying that there’s a man who routinely comes to the lake and you haven’t lost all sanity and tied him there in your place?”

She squints at him, confused by the question. “Of course not. I swore, just as you did, that I wouldn’t force anyone to take my place.”

He nods slowly, pondering her words. “Sure, I understand. That oath was important to me, and I spent many lifetimes trying to uphold it. But no one ever tempted me so continuously.”

“How do you mean?”

“I only had a few visitors spread across hundreds of years. People who had a natural affinity for the lake’s magic, or else people who just saw things a little too clearly. But everyone who visited only came once, and they were smart enough to never return to a place that could easily trap them. I might’ve gone mad if someone repeatedly returned. I’m not sure I’d be strong enough after so many years alone to resist.”

“Of course you would,” she argues with a frown. Though she hardly knows him in the scheme of things, his upright belief in doing what was right is the part of him that stands out starkest in her mind. “You would’ve held out. I believe that.”

“Maybe you’re right. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be faced with that choice. I’m glad I don’t have to know if I would’ve broken.”

“I’ve never really thought about it like that,” she mumbles, whirling the torch in front of her again as another ghost approaches. “It’s never crossed my mind to trap Bellamy so I could finally die.”

“Really?” There’s a measure of shock in his voice. “Not even once? It wouldn’t be a bad thing if you had. It’s human to want to escape your prison.”

She shakes her head, thoughts rattling around that she’s never had to confront before. “No, I— It’s never even been a question. I never could’ve tied him there, so it didn’t occur to me as something to desire in the first place.”

“And now you’ve come here, to a place of nightmares, to give him the sword?” 

His voice is heavy with unsaid implications, but she pushes past them.

“Yes. We’re on the precipice of war. He needs Excalibur.”

“We? Do you still consider yourself a part of that world after so long?” His question isn’t rude because she knows that he’s genuinely confused.  _ She _ isn’t on the precipice of anything. Her life won’t change no matter who wins the war, except when it comes to Bellamy’s visits. “And anyways, it’s a magical item,” he reminds her. “I’ve seen it in passing, but never actually touched it. What if it could help you? What if it could break the spell that keeps you there?”

“If it can help me between now and the attack, then so be it. But after that, he’ll need it.”

“You’d give away a chance at freedom for that? For the hope of winning a battle?”

“I’d give away the chance of freedom for the assurance that he’ll come home. That will be enough to make the curse bearable.”

He keeps his eyes on her, suddenly weighted down by an ancient sadness.

“Does he stay with you? At the lakeside?”

“He can’t,” she says honestly. “He’s got bigger things to concern himself with. He’s the king of Camelot.”

His eyes go wide for a moment before he tempers his response. “So he can come home, but not to you.”

It’s not a question.

“No, not to me.”

“But he loves you?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked.”

“Because you’re afraid he doesn’t love you the same way you love him?”

She glares at him for a moment, wanting to hold that secret tight in her heart. Then, as if recognizing the truth of it all, she nods once.

“You’re doing a lot for him,” he says quietly.

“It’s all that I can do. I can’t leave the lake. I can’t fight in the battle alongside him. This is how I can save him. How I can save his kingdom.”

Wells gestures out in front of them, the ruins continuing further ahead. “This is a battle too, Clarke. One you’ll have to face alone. You’re braver than he’ll know for doing it, especially without any hope of reward.”

She bites at her lip. “My reward will be that he lives. That’s all I’m asking for.”

Wells stops short, as though there is an invisible line on the floor that prevents him from walking further. She jerks to a stop alongside him.

“Then I hope he lives.” He raises his hand, gesturing out to what looks like the remains of what was once a great hall, where dinners and dances could’ve been held. She knows there is a similar one, though kept in a considerably better state, in Bellamy’s castle. “This is as far as I can go.”

She looks around the room before them. There is no ceiling, as with all the ruins they’ve walked through thus far, and the sky is clouded over with grey. Unlike the rest of the isle, though, this room seems to have maintained what was once a flooring, the wood boards warped with age and the wearing of elements. A lone door stands on the other side of the room, heavy and imposing.

“What’s on the other side of the door?” She asks nervously.

“I’m not sure. The sword, I’d hope. But I can’t cross here to find out.”

“Are ghosts not allowed past this point?”

“No,” he says, an ominous note to the word. “Ghosts can go wheresoever they please. But there’s something stronger than me ahead, and I can’t push through the barrier it’s created.”

She puts a tentative foot forward, first just resting it carefully on the ground before she shifts her weight, testing if she can pass the barrier she cannot see. Nothing stops her.

She turns over her shoulder, looking at the faded face of her predecessor.

“Thank you, Wells. For coming for me when I needed you. For bringing me here.”

“It was the least I could do,” he says self-deprecatingly.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. I don’t.”

He stares at her as though he can see straight into her heart. “You should do the same.” Before she can even start to respond — the words  _ it’s not the same thing _ on the tip of her tongue — he continues. “I heard what those spirits were saying earlier. In your mother’s voice. In the voices of people who Lexa hurt. But you were her victim too. At the very least, everyone else has had the opportunity to find peace. You haven’t. Try to remember that the next time you want to blame yourself for her actions.”

She lets those words flow over her, the potential for absolution they provide like the caress of a magic spell. There is nothing more healing than the hope that, one day, she might be able to forgive herself.

“Thank you,” she whispers, the words broken and jagged but still sincere. “I’ll try not to forget.”

“Good luck, Clarke. I hope this journey will be worth it.”

She nods, a small, sad smile on her lips. Then Wells fades away before her as though he hadn’t ever been there at all.

She spins around, facing forward again. She is conscious of each step she takes, placing her feet one in front of the other in a careful, neat line. The progress is slow, but something about this decaying room is disquieting. She won’t feel at ease until the sword is in her hand.

Three quarters of the way across, she notices that the vines on the ground seem to be following her, growing towards her ankles bit by bit. They look like slow-moving snakes, poised and ready to strike.

She increases her pace.

Maybe fifteen steps from the door, she hears a loud thumping sound behind her, like a body hitting the ground. In her head, she knows she shouldn’t turn and look. Nothing is alive here — there aren’t bodies to be killed in the first place. Only spirits.

She turns anyway, dropping the torch beside her in shock.

Bellamy lays on the dirty flooring, clutching at a deep stab wound to the gut as though he might be able to hold all of his insides in place. He looks up at her with wide, frightened eyes.

“Clarke—” The word falls off his lips as a trail of blood leaks from the corner of his mouth and down his chin.

She instantly drops to her knees, hands floating over his skin, too afraid to touch.

“Bellamy, how—? How did this happen? How are you here? What did you  _ do?” _

His breathing is uneven, coming in in painful gasps as he presses against the wound. She moves to apply pressure as well, knowing that he will bleed out if they don’t form some kind of plan quickly. She can cauterize the wound with the fire, but she doesn’t know if any organs have already been punctured.

“I don’t know. Something’s… something’s wrong.” He coughs, the red droplets splattering onto the front of his formerly white shirt. “They know too much. A spy,” he forces out, lips stumbling around the words. His hands stop pressing so tightly against the wound, body growing more and more lax as the life seeps out of him. “A traitor.”

“A traitor?” She thinks of all the people Bellamy has mentioned to her in stories over the years. Though she’s never met any of his friends, she might recognize a name. “Who? Who did this to you?”

She uses more force, trying to hold him together through will alone, but his lips turn a terrifying greyish-pink color. There are flakes of blood on them, caked into the lines. The trickle running down the corner slows, though it doesn’t stop all together.

“Please, Bellamy. I have to know who did this to you,” she cries, removing one bloodstained hand to turn his head towards her, needing to keep his eyes on her face. She leaves an ugly red print on his face that covers his freckles, but his glazed eyes meet hers.

“I— It was…”

He pauses, the words coming out in an ugly gurgled sound.

“Bellamy, please! Please don’t go. I need you! We’re not done — you have to tell me who did this to you!” She pats his cheek, trying to keep his focus. He gives no response at all. “Please!” It comes out as a harsh sob. “Please, not yet...”

He stares up at her sightlessly, the hand on his stomach now entirely limp.

“Bellamy,” she whispers, leaning her forehead against his. 

She’d only kissed him once in all these years. What was the point? Why had she waited? She should’ve begged for whatever parts of him she could have had, even if he’d always be forced to leave.

She breathes out in stilted gasps against his face, wishing more than anything that he’d inhale beneath her. Her fingers twitch against the wound, begging to feel his chest rise.

It doesn’t.

She buries a hand in his hair, but before she can even enjoy the feeling of his soft curls one last time, they start to dissipate in her hand. The forehead beneath hers seems to blur, no longer fully tangible, and she backs up in alarm, watching as his face turns translucent. Then, without any warning, he disappears from the ground before her.

Part of her thinks that she’d just been tricked by another form of misery — a vision brought on by a ghost who only wishes to do her ill. It wouldn’t make sense, after all, for Bellamy to have been here. He couldn’t have followed her — not to this place.

The other part of her wonders if, against all odds and the little remaining hope in her body — he’s somehow already on the other side of Avalon. The side she will never touch.

A shiver wracks her body. His blood still coats the floor in an ugly red puddle, and she dips her finger in it if only in the hopes of discovering if it was real.

Then the heavy door creaks open behind her. Still on her knees and hunched over where he had lain only a moment before, she turns to look at the opening.

She can see through the doorway into what looks like a part of the ruins that has been almost entirely overcome by nature. Grass and flowers grow out of the ground with only a few bits of stone walls left to prove it was once anything besides lush forest. 

Framed by the warped wood of the doorframe, she can see a large boulder dead center in the grove, from which a gleaming sword protrudes.

Excalibur.

She stands shakily, looking at it in an almost disbelieving reverence. 

For all that she’d sacrificed of her peace of mind in coming here, a part of her was certain that it didn’t exist.

Bending over, she grabs the still burning torch from the ground, glad that the wood floor is so destroyed that it hadn’t set the whole place alight in her haste to help Bellamy.

Then she steps gingerly towards the doorway.

She has to assume he’s still alive, which means she has to get the sword. Anything else is unacceptable.

When she’s passed through it completely, the door shuts noisily behind her. It seems she either leaves with the sword or not at all.

She walks over to the boulder, letting her hand graze along the side, leaving another stroke of blood. The rock is huge — certainly taller than she is, but it’s half buried in a grassy mound that rises behind it. When she walks to the back, she finds that she is just tall enough to reach the pommel of the sword.

Eyes wide with awe, she lets her hand graze over it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

She turns on her heel, backing up so that her legs are pressed to the stone.

“Lexa,” she gasps, the word pulled from her like a curse. “What are you doing here?”

“You heard what Wells said,” she laughs, looking over Clarke with a calculating eye. “There was something too strong for him ahead, forcing him away. Maybe you thought it was the sword, but it wasn’t.” 

She curls her fingers in a sarcastic little wave.

“You haven’t moved on,” Clarke whispers, the realization coming to her quickly. It had always been her fear that coming to this island would bring her face to face with Lexa again. It was why she’d been so vehemently against ever finding out what was on the other side of the fog. But after Wells had spoken about crossing over, she’d had half a mind to hope that Lexa would’ve given up on her bitterness to move on.

But that would hardly be a fitting decision for Lexa, the woman who wanted the whole world and nothing less.

“Of course I haven’t.” She rolls her eyes. “I see you’re still at the lake. So at least I have that to bring me joy after what you did.”

“What  _ I _ did?” She asks in shock. “Have you lost your fucking mind? You did all of this! You ruined everything!”

“No, Clarke.  _ You _ ruined everything. Don’t you see?”

Clarke shakes her head, putting her hands behind her on the rock to keep steady.

“You joined me. You were an accomplice to what I was doing. You’re no better than me.”

“I didn’t know what you were doing! I didn’t know you were trying to undermine every other sorcerer by cutting off their magic at the source so you could steal it all for yourself! You are the reason there’s hardly any magic left! You destroyed it.”

“No, you destroyed it. You followed me when it suited you, and then turned traitor once you lost faith.”

Clarke stops breathing, and Lexa continues.

“You think I didn’t know that you were the one who told them the spell that would turn all my magic against me? You are the reason I died. You’re the reason all the magic died with me.”

If Lexa had thrown one of the huge pieces of rubble at her, it probably would’ve hurt less. It was the one part of the story she hadn’t mentioned to Bellamy.

“I only knew that spell because I’d heard you use it before! You were hurting other people with it — turning their magic against them until they were weak enough to steal from!”

“And you gave it to my enemies! You knew they would kill me! You knew it would pull the magic from the mortal realm right alongside me!”

“I didn’t! I didn’t know,” she cries. “I wasn’t magic. I didn’t know what would happen. One of the other students came to me once I was already trapped at the lake.”

“And you betrayed me.”

“How can you call that betrayal?! You trapped me in an eternity of solitude!”

“You wanted to live forever! I did you a favor.”

“Yeah,” she laughs bitterly. “Remind me to never ask for a favor from you again. I don’t think you know the meaning of the word.”

Lexa smiles, shaking her head as she steps closer. “It’s alright, Clarke. You can’t pull the sword anyway, so your trip was for nothing. I’m only here to torture you, not to stop you.”

“What do you mean?”

She keeps her eyes on Lexa as the woman stalks towards her. For some reason, she looks more tangible than Wells had — closer to something human. Maybe Lexa had held on so tightly to her former life that she hadn’t truly started to drift away into a spirit.

Or maybe she’s just fucking with Clarke.

“You can’t pull the sword, even if you wanted to. It’s for the fairest and noblest, isn’t it?” She cocks her head to the side with a smile.

“So why do you haunt this place?” She asks, half insult and half genuine curiosity. “Besides being dead, you aren’t either of those things. You can’t pull it either.”

Lexa glares at her angrily, as though she’s struck at an exposed nerve.

Clarke wonders how many hours, days, weeks,  _ years _ she’s spent tugging on a sword that won’t move.

“I was doing what was right for magic,” she says in earnest. “We were allowing ourselves to remain  _ weak. _ We subjudgated ourselves to kings who were no more powerful than animals. I would’ve ushered in a new dawn for the sorcerers if you hadn’t undermined me,” she growls.

“You were stealing from them. How can you pretend that what you did was an effort to help them? You just wanted to rid the world of the current royals so you could take over in their stead. You were a dictator.”

Lexa moves closer, a harsh look on her face. Clarke turns around quickly, putting her hand on the sword. With all her strength, she pulls on it.

It doesn’t budge.

Lexa stops just behind her, letting her fingers dance up Clarke’s spine. Unlike Wells, she feels entirely real. Clarke stills.

“You aren’t worthy,” she whispers into Clarke’s hair.

“Are you going to kill me?”

The words frighten her, and yet a part of her hopes the answer is yes. If anyone could break this curse, it would be Lexa. She’s not certain it’s possible, but it’s the most likely option left to her. She just wants to rest. She wants to see Bellamy too — to help him protect Camelot — but there’s an age-old exhaustion in her bones, and the idea of finally being done is appealing.

But that was never really an option.

“No, of course not,” Lexa says with a smile. Clarke doesn’t turn to face her, but she can hear it in her voice. “What would that do? You’d finally get to leave. No, you should have to suffer this half life just as I do.” She pauses, brushing Clarke’s hair away from her shoulder so she can feel each of Lexa’s words against her skin. She shivers. “But I can keep you here. At least for a little while. Long enough that the battle will be over, surely.”

Clarke turns her head at this, glaring venomously at Lexa. 

“How do you know about that?”

“You have your ways of keeping tabs on the world, and so do I. I know all about the Saxons. I might’ve even had a small hand in helping to nudge them along. It’s not often you get an invasion of Camelot by those from so far north, but if you want something done right, it’s the Saxons who will do it.”

“How did you—? You’re trapped here. How could you—?”

“It’s been two centuries, Clarke. It might take a lot of energy to accomplish, but it’s not impossible for me to slip into a dream or two from time to time.”

“And you… told them to attack Camelot?”

“Of course,” she smiles. “Although I told them specifically to attack your King Arthur.” Then, leaning in even closer, she whispers, “Your Bellamy.”

Clarke pulls Bellamy’s dagger out from its place in her belt, jamming it immediately into Lexa’s side with the full force of her rage.

Lexa looks down in alarm before raising her head again, a cruel smirk on her lips.

“What did you think that was going to do?”

Clarke pulls the blade out harshly, but nothing happens. There’s no blood. No magic pours out. She doesn’t fade away or deflate. Nothing.

“He’s going to die, you know,” Lexa continues. “You saw that before. You can’t stop it.”

“He’ll die eventually. But not now. Not like this.”

With the door closed on this little part of the forest, high walls of the ruins surrounding them, Clarke isn’t sure if she could escape even if she wanted to. She will live forever as the guardian of the lake, and she wonders if fate is cruel enough to allow her to guard it from this side, spending eternity here as Lexa’s plaything. If the universe would be so ruthless as to let her curse play out in this way.

Lexa twists a lock of Clarke’s hair around her finger, taunting her. “If only you were worthy, Clarke. Then maybe you could save him. But you can’t.”

Clarke thinks about Lexa’s words — that she is partially at fault for first following Lexa and then for betraying her. That the collapse of magic in the world is her doing.

But then Wells pops into her head. Even after hardly knowing her, he’d still come to help her find the sword. He’d asked her not to blame herself so harshly for the things she didn’t understand at the time. She’d never helped Lexa with any of her actions — she simply hadn’t known they were happening until it was too late. Once she had the opportunity to stop a tyrant in the making, she’d done what was necessary, and so had the others. The loss of magic was tough to bear for everyone who’d had to make that choice, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice in order to not live under an all-powerful ruler who would routinely hurt others to further her every whim.

Lexa was the exact opposite of Bellamy. The exact opposite of his style of leadership and the people he surrounded himself with. Even if he were to die tomorrow, the legacy of the Round Table would continue on without him, being led by good men and women who want to be better than the kings and sorceresses of old.

Lexa takes a step back from her, letting out a low chuckle as she does so. Perhaps she thinks she can continue monologuing for the next hundred years until Clarke finds a way out of this room.

But Clarke hardly pays her any mind as the warmth of another person disappears from behind her back. Instead, she pictures Bellamy’s smiling face as they lay in the grass by the lake. The lines around his eyes that have developed in the last few years always give her a secret thrill to see.

Most kings — even those as young as he — become tired and overburdened by their roles. But Bellamy has smiled so often throughout his life that it has etched marks onto his face. Even in hardship, he finds moments of joy.

This is how she can help. This is how she can save Camelot from within the bounds of her curse. No mortal could come here to free the sword from its prison.

With those thoughts in her mind — Bellamy’s smile and her need to preserve it — her hand rises to touch Excalibur again. Gently at first, and then with a firmer grip.

Lexa must turn again towards her because a laugh rings out like a bell from over Clarke’s shoulder. 

“Give up, Clarke. You can’t make yourself into something worthy.”

If Clarke were listening, she would probably say that that’s exactly what Lexa has spent two hundred years trying to do. She waits here each day, trying to convince herself that today will be the day that the sword finally moves.

But Clarke isn’t listening. 

Instead, with a little exhale, she pulls her hand up, expecting the same resistance.

Instead, the sword rises from within the stone, the motion as easy as if the huge rock was the finest-crafted scabbard.

When she’s pulled it free, the sharp point now glinting in the air for the first time since the death of Arturus the First, there’s a gasp from behind her.

“You can’t. You couldn’t have.”

“I guess I wasn’t so unworthy after all,” she murmurs, unable to pull her eyes from the weapon. There’s something terribly, magnificently otherworldly about it. She’s almost afraid it doesn’t belong in her hand, but that’s not what the sword had decided.

“Clarke,” comes Lexa’s smooth voice again. It’s like she’s trying to entrance her into another terrible decision — seduce her until she kneels at Lexa’s feet. “That’s a magical item. You know what it could do for us.”

_ Us. _ Clarke barely holds in her laugh.

“Give it to me,” she continues, moving in closer again. Clarke can feel her presence at Clarke’s back, her hand resting just above Clarke’s arm. “You know I’ve been waiting for it. Give it to me or I will take it from you.”

Clarke’s hand tightens around the grip, her jaw clenching at the words. All this time — after so many opportunities for reflection — Lexa still thinks that Clarke is her unwitting lackey. That she can be made to do Lexa’s bidding if only the temptress can find the right words.

“You’ll have to take it then.”

Lexa lets out a huff. Clarke wonders if Lexa  _ can _ take it. If the sword’s magic somehow requires it to be given willingly to someone who isn’t worthy, or if some such failsafe exists. It wouldn’t be the first time that a magical item had a strange limitation.

“Don’t be stupid, Clarke. You can’t kill me. I’m already dead. Give me the sword and I won’t have to hurt you to get it.”

She smiles up at the shining blade in her hand. It’s as though the sun somehow has cut right through the dense clouds to shine directly onto the sword, illuminating it with a glow that captivates her.

“I will destroy you to get it,” Lexa reiterates, sounding increasingly agitated each time she’s given no reponse. “I will torture you until the end of time until you hand it over. And you’ll never die.”

Clarke can hardly focus on Lexa’s words. They sound like they’re coming to her from underwater, only the vaguest hints of language reaching her ears. Her eyes never stray from Excalibur.

Then she smiles up at it.

“It never misses its mark.”

Without another word, she pivots around, swinging her arm down to slice cleanly through Lexa’s torso. Though Clarke hardly has the strength to create so deep a wound, the sword still manages to embed itself deeply into her — so deep, in fact, that she’s nearly cleaved in twain.

Lexa’s eyes go wide. There’s no blood — she isn’t alive, after all. But the wound seems to tear apart the fabric of her being, and she begins to fade away at the edges of the sword’s cut. It spreads along her chest as Lexa grasps desperately at her torso, trying to hold the essence of her soul together. She’s never truly wanted to be a spirit — chose instead to remain this undead  _ thing, _ a wraith caught between two worlds. Now she will have no choice.

“What have you done?” She gasps. There’s no pain in her voice — only a malicious rage.

“You said I couldn’t kill you, and you’re right. No mortal weapon could touch you. But Excalibur never misses.”

Lexa crumbles away before her eyes, and the tired, sadistic,  _ unworthy _ part of Clarke revels in seeing it. Lexa had ruined her life, but she’d also led her to this destiny: to Bellamy and Excalibur and the hope of being with him one day in Avalon.

This isn’t the end of her life, she’s certain. Not with Excalibur in her hands.

When the door opens for her again, she walks through it with her head held high. She keeps the sword in her tight grip as she traverses back through the ruins towards the lake. This time, she requires no guide or torch to keep the spirits at bay. None dare to approach her.

She climbs back into the boat, setting the sword down at her feet only so she can grab the oars. When she turns back to the isle, getting one last glimpse before the fog swallows her whole, she smiles.

This place had once tormented her nightmares. Now she has made it her own.

Maybe Bellamy’s right — she really is the Lady of the Lake. Avalon, then, is her domain.

When the boat reaches the other side of the fog, her own little home again before her, she grins triumphantly.

***

Bellamy is waiting there on the shore for her when she returns, a nervous disposition shown in the way he carries himself. When she climbs out of the boat, he watches her carefully.

“Where were you?”

She points back to the lake behind her, as though it’s obvious. He must’ve seen her rowing across the entire visible portion. “Avalon. Why are you here again so soon?”

“So soon?” He asks confusedly. “It’s been three days since my last visit.”

“Three days?! That’s not possible. It’s only been a few hours.”

He glances out over the water, and they both wonder for a moment at the strange happenings of the isle. Time, she supposes, isn’t perfectly in tune between the two realms.

“I’m not too late, am I?”

He pulls her to him, kissing her soundly. She returns it with an eager zeal, grateful to have this tiny mercy from the universe. There had been so many moments of panic while she’d been away, from the voices to Lexa to  _ watching him die, _ but he’s here right now, healthy and alive. She holds onto his upper arms tightly, afraid that if she loosens her grip he’ll disappear for real this time.

“You’re not too late,” he whispers against her lips. “The battle will be tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Soon, certainly.”

“Then I suppose you can’t waste any time.”

“No time I spend here is wasted. Not when I’m with you. Not when it might be the last chance.”

She covers his mouth with hers, refusing to believe that this could ever be the last time. He’s Bellamy. He’s  _ King Arthur, _ the once and future king who will live forever in the minds of his people. He won’t die like this.

He can’t.

She kisses him with no small amount of desperation, needing to stay only in this moment.

“I have something for you,” she murmurs, sliding her hands up to his cheeks.

“Have you?”

“Yes. I keep my oaths, too.” 

Then she turns, bending over to pull Excalibur out from where it had been resting in the bottom of her boat, concealed from view.

His jaw slackens at the sight. “You found it?! But... how—?”

She smiles. “Oh, it wasn’t hard.”

He laughs at her cheek. “I’m sure that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Well it’s a bit of a long story.” Then she lays it across her palms, holding it out in offering to him, “Anyway, it’s yours.”

“I feel like I don’t deserve it,” he whispers. “I didn’t earn this. I wish you could wield it instead as you deserve to do.”

She smiles, mind quieter than it has been since he’d come to tell her about the invasion. Quieter, even perhaps, than it has been since she was first tied to this place.

“I don’t need it. The battle with the Saxons isn’t my fight. My fight was facing my demons and getting this sword. I’ve done that now. The sword is mine because I earned it — because I was worthy to carry it. But you’re worthy too, and you’re the one with a battle still before you. I don’t need it anymore, but you do. Don’t let it go to waste.”

“How do you know I’m worthy?”

“I just do,” she says truthfully. “You were called here for a reason. Or two reasons, I suppose. For the sword. And for the Lady of the Lake.”

He stares at her for another moment before looking down at the blade in her hands, still glowing with an aura of unknown power.

“I could shove it in a rock for you,” she says easily. “And you could pull it back out again. If that would help prove something to you.”

He looks at her again, love radiating from his eyes, from his smile, from the lines worn into his skin that she’s so fond of.

“No, I don’t need that. If you have faith in me, then that’s enough.” He reaches out to touch the sword, fingers grazing over it so carefully, as though it was forged of the finest glass instead of magically-tempered steel. “And anyways, it’ll make a better story to hear that the Lady of the Lake pulled this from a stone on Avalon, if that’s what you’re saying happened.”

She laughs. “No one will ever hear that part of the tale. It’ll be King Arthur’s glory.” He frowns at the words, and she laughs again at his antics. “I don’t mind, Bellamy. You’re sort of poised to be the romantic hero of this adventure. The Once and Future King going to defend his kingdom from invaders with a magical sword. People will tell this tale to their grandchildren for generations.”

“I don’t need to be remembered for any of that. I’d rather they remember this part — just me and you.”

She nudges the sword further into his grip, and finally he takes it and holds it aloft, every inch the warrior.

“I think they’ll figure out for themselves what they want to remember.”

His eyes immediately are drawn away from the sword and to her face again. “And what about me? What about what I want to remember?”

She shrugs. “Your choice, I suppose. You’ve never been one to do what others tell you to.”

He drops the sword to the ground, not even looking at where it falls. Then he stalks towards her, grabbing her face in his huge hands and devouring her in a heated kiss.

“Good,” he says brokenly. “Then I choose this.”

He drops his head to her neck, peppering it with kisses before he stops beneath her jaw to suck a bruise into the skin there.

“Don’t you have— have a war to— to fight?” She gasps out, holding his head against her despite her reminder to him of his duty. If she lets go…

If she lets go, she may never see him again.

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow,” he breathes into her skin. They form a litany, a promise. There is no way to know what tomorrow will bring, but they have tonight. Nothing matters tonight but this.

“Are you sure?” She presses, afraid that he won’t leave. Afraid that he will. “Aren’t there…  _ details—” _ she gasps out when he nips at her skin. “Details to finalize?”

“I have knights. I’m delegating.”

“If you’re sure.”

His hands move to pull at her dress, the thing old and half-destroyed from wear. Though he tugs at it eagerly, he’s careful not to cause any damage.

“I’m sure,” he whispers, pulling her dress off until it pools at her feet.

When his mouth dips down to her breast, she stops asking questions.

His hands run across her newly naked skin, and a shiver runs through her at the sensation. Finally,  _ finally. _

She’s been waiting for so long, convinced this day would never be possible. The dam between them would never break and they would continue to live on opposite sides of it. But with his mouth around her nipple, her fingers buried in his hair, she can’t imagine being on opposing sides of anything.

She can have him right now. Maybe only ever right now, but she isn’t going to waste this one chance thinking about the future.

Clarke pushes at his shoulders, and he pulls back in alarm. Before he can bother asking if he’s done something wrong, she tugs off his gambeson, the thick fabric on the ground in seconds. Eager fingers soon discard his tunic beside it.

“Bellamy,” she whispers, running her hands up his torso. Her fingers skate along the exposed skin that she’s spent so long trying never to picture.

She can’t deny herself anymore. This one pleasure is more than deserved. 

He kisses her again, hands cradling her head so carefully as he does. Then, gently, he lowers them to the ground. The grass tickles as he crawls over her, never drawing his lips away.

She pushes at the cloth at his hips, wanting to rid him of the last of his coverings. He drags himself away from her for a moment — just long enough to free himself entirely — before resuming his place above her.

Wrapped in his warm embrace, she feels at home for the first time in her long life. He teases her for several interminable moments before, finally, with her heels at his back, she brings him forward to connect them. He pushes in, and she can’t help but groan against his mouth.

As he moves, she tries to lose herself in this one point in time. She wants to be able to remember it perfectly — to live in it for the remainder of her days. One of his hands runs through her hair so softly as he peppers her flushed skin with more kisses.

Each thrust and kiss and meeting of persons makes her want to cry — makes her want to break down that this is their reality. These are the worlds they were given too: a king bound by duty and an immortal creature bound by a curse. This is their story, and their story is a tragedy.

Once they both reach their climaxes, he pants against her skin, desperate to not pull away. She clutches at his back, fingers digging into the flesh if only it means he’ll stay a moment longer. A moment — just a moment. That’s all she needs to compose herself.

At last he flops over beside her, tucking her into his side so they don’t have to be apart. Everywhere that her bare skin touches his feels like it’s on fire.

She hasn’t been touched — hasn’t been cared about or loved — in so long. It’s almost impossible to imagine that she has that even now.

She’s never gotten the chance to lay so close to him before. Even on their lazy afternoons where he would eschew his duties, they’d keep several inches between them, staring with wide eyes across a small expanse of grass. It was the line that they could never cross. A safeguard and a reminder.

Now, she lays her head on his chest, feeling the way he breathes heavily beneath her.

“Is this the reason why you never married?” She jokes, tracing the lines of his muscles.

“Yes,” he responds easily, without any artifice or hesitation. “I could never marry while I’m in love with you.”

“Never? Never’s a long time, Bellamy.”

He stretches his neck to kiss her. “Maybe not so long.”

With those words — so innocuous and simple — she sees under her fingertips the red bloom of a fatal gut wound. The same one she couldn’t save him from on the Isle of Avalon. Her throat constricts at the vision, blood spilling down his sides and onto the grass.

She blinks heavily, trying to wash away the image. “Don’t talk like that. Everything’s going to be fine. It’s gonna be fine.”

He kisses her shoulder. “Of course it is. But if it isn’t—”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear it.”

_ “In case it isn’t,” _ he repeats, “then I’ll be here with you again anyhow. And I’ll take you to Avalon with me.”

Her nose tingles as tears gather behind her eyes.

“It’s not time for that. It’s not. You’re the once and future king. There’s still too much for you to do.”

He shrugs. “Maybe.” At her glare, he continues, trying to ease her mind. “I don’t want to die, don’t get me wrong. I want to return to you exactly as I am, whole and healthy and still just as much yours as ever.” He smiles down at her, tracing over her features with his eyes. “I want to live my life with you, even in the limited way we can. I’m yours.”

He holds her closer to him, wanting to meld them together for this night.

“But if I do die, I’ll still be here. I return to you no matter what. You’re the light — the guiding star that I follow. So don’t worry for me.”

She knows it’s not her battle; she’d said as much before. And yet she can’t help but wish.

“If I could just help you, I wouldn’t feel so useless.”

“You have, Clarke. Of course you have. And I don’t just mean Excalibur — it’s everything. You’ve been giving me the answers all along. The Round Table, respect for the magic left in Camelot… all of it. I’m only a good king because you’ve made me one.”

“That’s a lie. You were always good.”

“Okay,” he smiles, brushing the hair off her forehead. “Then I’m  _ better _ for what you’ve given me. And I’ll come back to you, because I know we’re always best when we’re together.”

He continues whispering sweet words into the night air, their bare bodies never separated. Eventually he coaxes the story of her journey to Avalon out of her, and she tries to relay it as faithfully as she can.

But even as she speaks, the moon moving across the sky above them as their remaining hours drift away, she can only hear Lexa’s voice in her head, saying the words she wishes she didn’t remember.

_ “He’s going to die, you know. You can’t stop it.” _

Tears fill her eyes, and he wipes them away before they truly have a chance to bead on her lash line. 

“Don’t cry,” he pleads. “Not tonight. Nothing will hurt us tonight.”

Even in the warm, tender embrace of Bellamy’s arms, she doesn’t sleep at all.

***

In the morning, she wraps herself tightly to him, trying to feign sleep so that he won’t make them rise for the day. And though he keeps silently holding her, she’s certain he’s awake too.

“I think it’s time, Clarke,” he whispers lowly, letting them hang onto the grey light of dawn for as long as possible.

“Five more minutes.” At his attempted rebuttal, she tucks her head further into his shoulder, not wanting to let go. “Please. Five more minutes. I can’t—”

He sighs against the top of her head before placing a kiss there.

“Okay. Five more minutes.”

When they finally stand, they redress somberly. The safety of the night has passed, and early light has brought back all of their problems.

She helps him into his gambeson and the light plate armour he’d brought with him. He’ll return to the castle before they set off for the front on the northern border. More than likely, there will be no battle until the following day, but it’s hard to know what energy the Saxons will greet them with.

She kisses his cheek as she tightens the straps on his pauldron, patting it gently after it’s on snugly. Then, from the bottom of her dress, she tears off another long strip of the fabric, moving to tie it around his bicep.

“Your favor, Lady of the Lake?” He asks with a small grin.

“That’s how this started, isn’t it?” She can’t help but remember that first fight against Sir Charles Pike, back when Bellamy hadn’t known her name. When a favor, rather than a sword, was all she was willing to give him. “And anyways, if I can’t be with you…”

“Thank you,” he says, taking her hands in his. “I’ll cherish it, come what may.”

“I want to give you something else.”

“You’ve already given me a weapon and your favor. What else could I possibly deserve?”

She walks over to Llamrei, who has been resaddled this morning for their imminent departure. Normally he would’ve brought Hengroen, but his steed will be needed for greater purpose soon, so he’d been allowed to spend the night in the stables.

Clarke reaches into one of the saddlebags, pulling out Bellamy’s waterskin.

“You have more than one of these?”

“Of course,” he responds, trying to figure out where this is going.

She takes a swig of the remaining water before checking that it’s empty. Then she walks over to the lake’s edge, submerging it enough to let some of the water fill the skin. She closes again before standing up and handing it to him.

“Don’t drink it,” she says with a laugh. “It’s probably not the cleanest so close to the muddy bank. But the lake is at least a little bit magic, so hopefully it’ll give you luck. Hopefully it’ll bring you back to me.”

He smiles down at it in his hands before looking up at her again. “I already told you—”

“You’ll come back no matter what, I know. But I’d rather you come back alive, so take the water. It’ll make me feel better, at least.”

It’s the last piece of herself she can give him. The sword she’d fought for, the scraps of the dress she wears, the water of her home — they’re the only things left in her life besides him. She would do anything, give him anything in her power, to ensure his safe return.

“Thank you.”

Then he gets a big, stupid grin on his face just before bowing to her dramatically. “Do I have your blessing, fair lady?” 

She laughs loudly. “You already have the favor. Isn’t that enough?”

“Humor me.” His eyes sparkle up at her from beneath his lowered head, waiting in supplication.

She steps forward with a smile. “Rise, sir knight.” When he returns to his full height, she puts one hand behind his neck, pulling him down just enough that she can place a soft kiss to the center of his forehead. “And fight with my blessing.” Then, without any attempt at civility and decorum, she tacks on, “No mercy, Bell. Not for this.”

“I’m not sure—”

She shakes her head, eyes serious. “Not for this. Not when they’re coming to destroy your kingdom.”

She remembers, just for a moment, how amazing it had felt to cut Lexa down, to finally be rid of the person who tormented her for so long. She can imagine that it’ll feel just as good to protect the kingdom he loves from certain destruction.

“Okay,” he nods. “You’re right.”

“And be safe.”

“I will.” He crowds towards her again, hands on her waist and his forehead touching hers. “I love you.”

“I love you,” she whispers heavily. “You have to go.”

“I know.” He doesn’t pull away, holding her for a few beats longer. “I know.”

Then he turns, pulling Excalibur from where they’d embedded the tip in the ground, moving to sheath it at his side before climbing onto Llamrei.

“I’ll come back,” he says with conviction as the horse begins to take him away from her. “Either way, I’ll come back.”

“I know.”

And then, just as always, she waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Arthurian myths, Arthur either (1) pulls Excalibur from the stone himself, or (2) is given the sword by the Lady of the Lake as a sign of his worthiness as king. So I just combined them because they're both fun.
> 
> Next chapter will take us through the battle and bring us back to the **Now** blurb we saw at the beginning of chapter one.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, and please drop a comment if you did!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a roller coaster, and I feel like I need to warn you of that going in.
> 
> There are, like, eighty times where you might think this is going to end in disaster, but I urge you to keep reading to the end, even though it is sometimes sad. It has what I would consider a happy or hopeful ending, so don't be put off when things start to go a bit sideways.
> 
> This actually might be one of my favorite stories I've ever written now that I can see how it looks complete. I had a lot of fun tying all the myths together in what I hope is a satisfying way.

Bellamy rides back to the castle with Excalibur at one hip and the waterskin filled with the lake's magic water on the other. He barely manages to toss the reins to the stableboy before running off to the council chambers. It’s there that they’ll be preparing the last minute logistics.

Within half an hour, he’s on a fresh horse, leading the knights and other warriors of Camelot towards the northern border.

“And they’re still targeting the same pass to enter the kingdom?” He asks Miller as they ride, though he knows the answer already. He’d asked the same question ten minutes prior. The stress of the morning has him so on edge that he needs to hear the words again.

“Yes. They’re due to cross through the pass near the town of Troyes. We will get there first and block it off. Have some of our men at the exit to the pass, and then we can station the long-range fighters on higher ground, so that they can fire down into the pass itself. They’ll be bottlenecked and easy to pick off.”

He nods. “Good. You and Lincoln are to stay with Octavia. And for god’s sake, try to keep her as far from the frontline of cavalry as possible.”

“But Bellamy—”

“That’s an order. Protecting Octavia is a better use of your time than protecting me. It can only be you and Lincoln, because you two are the only ones who I’m certain aren’t the one colluding with the Saxons.”

“Will you at least keep out of the initial charge?” Miller asks tiredly, like he’s been corralling in Bellamy’s worst ideas for too long at this point. Which, Bellamy supposes, is probably somewhat true. “And keep a few knights with you at all times? We’ll all be far less stressed if we’re not worried that you’re trying to single handedly defeat every last northman.”

“Fine. I’ll keep Murphy and Steve with me. No one else though. It doesn’t help to look too conspicuous.”

Miller rolls his eyes but doesn’t try to offer a counter argument. 

“Just don’t go off on your own. The goal is to not have to carry you home on your shield.”

“Noted.” Then, though he’s always had an excellent memory for the geography of his kingdom, he asks, “The pass by Troyes… What is that land called again? The name’s slipped my mind.”

“Camlann, Sire.”

“Yes, Camlann. Of course.”

***

They make it to the pass by mid-morning, having not needed to travel far from the citadel, which — unfortunately for them if this invasion isn’t stopped — is already fairly close to the northern border.

The majority of their troops, including all of the infantry, had traveled out and made camp there days before, prepared for whenever the Saxons would arrive. The addition of the knights and the cavalry brings their entire fighting force together.

They have time to stop and refresh themselves while they wait, and Bellamy is careful to check that his armor is still sitting on him properly and that he has Clarke’s gifts with him.

A messenger arrives, presenting himself to Bellamy.

“My lord, the knights keeping guard have sent word that the Saxons are a mile away. The bulk of their forces should be here within the hour.”

Bellamy nods, trying not to look as wrung out as he feels. “Thank you. We will be prepared to greet them when they arrive.”

Everyone arms themselves accordingly, knowing where they need to be when the enemy arrives. For as little time as they’d been given to figure out how to deal with the threat, the planning had been a surprisingly swift process. It had been a bit tricky to accomplish — Bellamy had wanted to keep as much of the plan under wraps as possible, so people were only given their own assignments without context for the greater picture — but it seems that things are running like clockwork. People are understandably keen to do whatever necessary to protect their homes, and they will follow the orders given to them to achieve that goal.

When everyone is armed to the teeth and the archers are in place along the sides, Bellamy turns to those with him at the mouth of the pass. Murphy and Steve sit on their horses on either side of him.

In his loudest voice, he yells over their heads, staring at the sea of faces before him.

“I know you’re afraid. I know you are, and I am too. It would be foolish to walk into battle without a trace of fear. But this is our _home._ This is the place that our ancestors created, stone by stone. Our families live here, and our dead are buried here. Camelot is more than just the city and the surrounding towns and farms. It’s more than just its king or its knights. Camelot is all of _you._ The people who allow it to flourish; the families who watch it prosper generation after generation.

“And now these Saxons think they can rip all of that away from us, like our lives here are meaningless. If they start eating away at our lands, they will never stop. There will be no safety from them unless we can drive them away. And that’s why we’re going to fight with everything we have! We are going to fight so they can’t take away the lives we’ve built from the ground up.

“So fuck fear! The story of this kingdom and her people continues today, with the battle we will fight to defend her. It’s our story to tell, and I promise you it’ll be one of triumph. Come what may, we all leave this battlefield as loyal citizens! And that’s why we’ll fight today — for Camelot!”

The men cry out, raising their weapons high in the air.

“For Camelot!”

Murphy smirks from beside him, kicking his foot out against Bellamy’s, lightly enough not to spook the horse.

“Good job, Your Highness,” he says with the sarcastic lilt to the title that Bellamy’s come to expect from all his friends. “In another life, I bet you were a bard.”

Steve let out a deep, rumbling guffaw from his other side. “No way in hell. Bellamy was definitely a conman. The way he talks, he could have someone handing over their change purse before they even know what hit ‘em.”

Bellamy ignores them both, rolling his eyes. 

It’s nice to know that, even facing down an imminent battle, some things never change.

***

As the Saxons make it to the exit of the pass, things become chaotic very quickly. 

The archers work from their spot on the higher ground on either side, firing down into the gorge. 

The Saxons seem surprised to see them here, but in hindsight it must be obvious. Of course Camelot’s forces would want to fight somewhere that their opponents could be led into a trap. At this point, the Saxons only have two options — to go forward or to try to back up.

Without alerting anyone except Miller, Octavia, and Lincoln, Bellamy had already made plans to have a secret, smaller contingent waiting at the other side of the pass. That way, if they try to turn-tail, they’ll be met with further resistance. But the truth is, Bellamy isn’t terribly worried. After all, the Saxons seemed to decide that now was the opportune time to attack Camelot anyhow after years of peace, so he doesn’t think they’ll be quick to abandon their plans.

Those who make it through the pass itself find the bulk of Camelot’s army at the exit waiting for their arrival. As the first of their ranks push through, Bellamy sounds the charge, sending a flurry of troops to defend their position. They won’t bother pushing too far in, letting the Saxons come to them. The contingent at the back should eventually start forcing them forward anyhow.

Bellamy himself stays out of the initial fight, not wanting to immediately break faith with Miller after promising not to be reckless. A dead king can protect no one.

The clashing of swords and the cries of the wounded soon float over the pass. The ground turns into a veritable mudpit, and some of the horses struggle not to get stuck. It makes him nervous seeing the cavalry unable to maneuver easily.

The first wave lasts longer than Bellamy had expected, though he only fights against those who make it behind the frontlines, and they are easy enough to pick off from atop Hengroen’s back. By the time any soldier makes it to him, they are already more than worn down. It almost isn’t fair.

After an interminable amount of time, when a pile of bodies litters the ground around him, the Saxons sound a horn, and the initial group begins to retreat in an attempt to regroup. Bellamy calls to his own troops at the front line, urging them back rather than to pursue. It will do them no good to trap themselves in the gorge as well, should something go wrong. They need to maintain both the exit and the higher ground.

There is a momentary pause, as though everyone on both sides is caught in the space between one breath and the next. Then the Saxons, unable to turn tail, storm forward again, choosing to come at them with the full might of their infantry.

Camelot’s front line fights valiantly, but eventually enough of the Saxons manage to push through, bringing the battle properly to Bellamy’s feet. He and Hengroen ride through the field, swinging Excalibur at any enemy target he can reach. And even amidst the absolute mayhem and carnage of the scene, the sword never misses where he aims. If a soldier comes close enough to him, they do not survive it.

Suddenly, Hengroen jolts to a stop, nearly throwing Bellamy from his mount in the process. His body stiffens in panic, trying desperately to maintain its seat. An arrow sticks out of Hengroen’s hind leg. His poor horse tries bravely to continue on, but he can hardly walk with the injury, a tortured limp jerking them forward. Bellamy’s weight on his back is too much.

Bellamy dismounts immediately, not wanting to hurt him any further. Hengroen lets out a whinny, the sound somehow both pained and mournful.

He runs his hand along the horse’s face, forehead to muzzle. The battle rages around them, noisy and chaotic and violent, but for a moment Bellamy’s world is quiet.

Sweat covers his face beneath his helmet, and a few stray tears fall to his cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Hengroen,” he says sadly. “And thank you.”

Before he can do anything to help him — or end his suffering, as it’s obvious he won’t make it home with such an injury — a cry from behind steals his focus.

He turns to see Atom, helmet knocked off beside him on the ground, with a dagger lodged in his neck. Blood spills down his lips as he chokes. His hand flutters near the wound, but even stupefied as he is, Atom seems to know that no amount of pressure applied will save him.

“Please,” he whispers. Bellamy can’t hear the words among all the cries around them, he can read them on his lips. Can see his anguish. “Please.”

“In peace, may you leave the shore,” he murmurs under his breath, sword raised to the sky. “In love, may you find the next.”

Excalibur falls. It doesn’t miss its target.

Then he turns back to Hengroen, and he wishes away another friend. Clarke will protect them now.

He has to believe that.

***

The bloodshed continues, Bellamy running wherever he feels he can be most useful. He spots Octavia at one point, dueling against a large man carrying twin swords. 

Not for the first time, he isn’t sure if he should curse or thank Indra for making Octavia so skilled that she thinks she can take on anyone in her path.

Lincoln is nearby though, fending off his own opponent, and he feels sure that he will step in should things go sideways. Miller, too, is somewhere nearby, occasionally giving Bellamy a little salute whenever they see each other. 

It’s not that Bellamy thinks she is any less capable than the others, but she cannot die in this place, and he knows that his friends are committed to making sure it’s so, even if she isn’t.

Steve and Murphy stick close to him as ordered, though they’re often too focused on staying alive themselves to keep a careful eye on the king, which is all the better. There is only so much babysitting one can allow as king.

Sometimes in a tourney, even the ugliest fight could still feel like a dance, both parties knowing the steps forward and back as their swords parried in the middle.

This isn’t like that. This is brutal — the pained wails rising up from the thick of the fighting. The bodies littering the ground are desiccated. Each is a hack job. There is no honor given to anyone’s death, only expediency.

From the center of the slaughter comes a deep yell. 

“King Arthur!” The man screams, hands raised out to either side. Around his helmet, like a fool, he wears a crown, displaying to everyone on the field exactly who he is.

Tristan, King of the Saxons.

“Come out, come out wherever you are!” He continues to taunt him, calling out into the frenzy to ask if Camelot’s king is a coward.

He can almost hear his conscience — a voice that sounds like an odd mix of Miller and Clarke — telling him not to fall for the taunts. Anyone could kill Tristan right now, virtually ending the battle. It doesn’t have to be him.

But he’s the king, and it’s his job to protect these people. If he can kill Tristan, the Saxons will be rudderless.

He steps forward, Excalibur warm and ready in his hand. Magic and prophecy stand on his side, and he tries to take comfort in that.

“You called?”

Through the holes in Tristan’s helmet, he can see the man’s sneer.

“This is Camelot’s golden boy? The mighty Once and Future King?” He laughs loudly. “I expected more. This won’t take long at all.”

Bellamy smiles. It’s not the time for vanity, but he knows he can beat this man easily. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be underestimated by an opponent.

Even born a king, he’s been thought weak for much of his life. But if he could beat Sir Charles Pike as a newly crowned king, then surely he can do this. With Excalibur’s power in his clutches, Clarke’s favor on his arm, and his years of experience behind him, he doesn’t feel so afraid. He is no longer a lost child — he is the king.

He flicks the tip of his sword up, inviting Tristan to attack.

Tristan smirks “You know, people told me this would be difficult. That I’d never get past the famed Knights of the Round Table. But tonight I’ll sleep in your bed with the whores of Camelot to warm me. And your head will decorate the castle’s front gate as a reminder to those who don’t bend the knee.”

Then he rushes forward.

He comes at Bellamy with full strength but little else. Each movement is harsh and powerful, arcing down in ways that sometimes force Bellamy back. Still, Tristan hasn’t any speed, and he doesn’t hide any of his movements. Each twist of his sword is projected loudly two seconds before he can see it through, giving Bellamy time to counterstrike. 

As they dance around each other, they find themselves separated from the main bulk of the fighting, hidden away behind a dense bit of foliage. Bellamy doesn’t mind at all — it means having to pay less attention to the scene around them. Steve and a few others are fighting nearby, but he trusts his knights to handle their own.

Tristan flourishes, raining down blows against Bellamy that he must think will seal the King of Camelot’s fate. A bellowing laugh erupts from his chest, but Bellamy manages to regain some of his edge, parrying them away. In the process, though, he loses his helmet. For a moment, the air feels wonderful against his sweaty face, but he knows this puts him at a disadvantage. 

Their swords ring out against each other with each hit, and though Bellamy’s arm grows tired from bracing against Tristan’s superior strength, he can see the other man flagging before him as well. When he moves to take a step back, Bellamy drops down, sweeping his leg out behind and under Tristan until he stumbles and falls.

Rolling quickly to hit feet, he stands over the Saxon king, sword pointed at his neck. The gap between the armor and his helmet isn’t huge, but Bellamy has enough time to wedge the tip between the plates before Tristan can make any move to get away.

His blade pressed against Tristan’s skin, he says, “You were right. It didn’t take long at all.”

Though he’s panting, the words still bring a current of fear into Tristan’s eyes.

Then he shoves the sword forward, and the only sound that the former king of the Saxons makes is a little gurgle.

He draws the sword out again, allowing the blood to spew forth from the wound. A rush of victory overcomes him — they’ve _done it._ The Saxons will return to their lands leaderless and without anything to claim within Camelot’s borders.

That feeling is immediately tempered by concern as he hears a pained groaning noise from behind him.

When he turns over his shoulder, trying to see what’s wrong, he’s met with the view of Steve’s crumpled body, blood pooling on the muddied ground beside him.

“What?” He asks stupidly, feeling disjointed from the world. Steve had been fine just a moment before, fighting with his back to Bellamy in order to protect him. He’d been _fine._

And now he’s dying, and there’s nothing Bellamy can do to stop it. There’s already too much blood for it to be a recoverable wound. He will return to Camelot with the dead. Like Atom, Bellamy can help him only by speeding along the inevitable.

He steps towards Steve, whispering a litany of _I’m sorry_ over and over again. There’s nothing that he wants to do less than kill his friend, but to leave him here to die slowly would be far crueler.

Steve’s eyes go wide with panic as Bellamy steps closer. His lips move but no sound comes out, and Bellamy tries again to tell him how sorry he is. The fear doesn’t ebb, and with the last energy left in his body, Steve agitatedly gestures at Bellamy.

He’s afraid that he’s become the phantom of death in this moment, but even as he lets his sword hand drop to his side, the frantic pointing doesn’t stop.

Bellamy furrows his brow, but before he has a chance to ask any questions, he feels the harsh, instantaneous, _cold_ pain of a knife in his side. The steel sinks deep into his skin through a joining point in his armor.

He turns in shock, realizing that Steve had been trying to warn him. Trying to tell him—

“Guess you didn’t see that one coming, did you?”

The dagger is yanked out quickly, and the feeling is as alien and startling as it was going in. Bellamy can already feel the mix of adrenaline and fatigue rushing through his body as the blood pools at the wound site. The dagger is wiped off on the dirtied red cloak of a knight of Camelot.

“I… How could you…?” He pants, holding a hand against the entry point. “How…? Murphy?”

“I know, I know. You’re appalled and confused at this betrayal. You thought I was your friend. You thought I’d do anything to protect Camelot.”

“Sounds like you—” he stops, gritting his teeth against the wave of pain that overcomes him. He needs the armor off; needs to hold himself together. He coughs painfully. “Sounds like you’ve given this monologue some thought.”

Murphy smirks. “Had to practice for the big moment.”

He saunters over to the dead Saxon king, pulling the armored coronet off his helmet and placing it around his own. A crown worn by a traitor.

“What was the goal here? What’s the point?”

“Well Tristan and his army are willing to make me king of Camelot once you are gone. Or… not Tristan anymore, but who needs him? All of his wealthy Saxon nobles backed the idea. Keeps the peace here well enough while they can reap the benefits of an alliance.”

Bellamy breathes heavily, needing to kneel down before his legs buckle under him. He stabs Excalibur deep into the mud, using it to keep himself marginally upright.

“They don’t want King Murphy. They just want their puppet vassal on Camelot’s throne so they can rule through you.”

Murphy laughs again. “Then they’ll be disappointed when they don’t find me very agreeable.” He swipes a finger over the knife’s blade. “But they don’t need to know that now.”

“And what’s the plan for Octavia?” He gasps out. “She’s next in line. The people of Camelot will never accept you stealing the throne away from her, and _your side_ isn’t winning.”

“Octavia will be dealt with,” he says ominously. “If she survives the battle, there are other ways to be rid of her. And if not, it would be easy enough to poison the minds of the people against her leadership. A woman _and_ a bastard? You didn’t think through the naming of your heir very well, did you? I only really need enough Saxons left to form a contingent who will support my claim.”

“What claim?” He spits out, the world swirling around him until he isn’t sure where to look. There are two, three Murphies all spewing filth around him.

“Right of conquest, of course. The Pendragons could only rule for so long, Bellamy. Unfortunately, that line ends with you.”

With Tristan’s crown on his head, Murphy moves in close, taunting Bellamy all the while.

“Bet you wish you’d given me more opportunities now. More chances to make a name for myself. Maybe then I wouldn’t have needed to forge my own destiny.”

“You’re angry that you didn’t get to find the holy grail or fight some ridiculous beast? That’s why you’ve betrayed everyone who loves you?”

“We all do crazy things sometimes for power.” He leans in close, breath ghosting over Bellamy’s sweaty face. “Your father knew that. And so did Lexa.”

Bellamy hunches over further in pain, but the look on his face at the words isn’t lost on Murphy.

He smirks. “Didn’t know about that, did you? The greatest sorceress in the world coming to visit me in a dream, telling me to overtake Camelot? How could I refuse?”

“So now you’re everyone’s puppet.”

“I don’t need to reward those who provide the good ideas unless it’s worth my while later. If they gamble with me and lose, that’s not my problem.”

“You’re right. It’s no one’s fault but your own when you gamble and lose.”

Then, with his last remaining strength, he pulls Excalibur from the mud swinging it at Murphy. He doesn’t even have time to react before it’s embedded in his chest.

“But that’s—”

He looks down in alarm, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. And he’s right — it’s impossible. No sword at such short range should’ve made so deep a cut through tempered armor, even if Murphy’s isn’t as finely-crafted as his own. Worse still, Bellamy barely has any of his strength left, and yet the sword had sunk in as though cutting through sand.

“Excalibur,” he says with a smile, giving the blade a little jerk in Murphy’s chest. “Never misses.”

“But you said… you weren’t—” he chokes as blood comes up, spluttering out of him in pained coughs. “Weren’t going after it.”

“I guess there were things you didn’t know either.”

Murphy’s wound, deeper and larger thanks to Bellamy twisting the sword, oozes so fast that his face rapidly turns white, his eyes glazing over. He slumps the rest of the way to the ground, staring up at the ugly grey sky above them. The blood mars his red cloak with rust colored stains.

“I’ve seen the gate of Avalon, Murphy. I know it’s calling to us. I know it’s over.” Then, carefully and with the aid of his sword once again, he climbs to his feet, hand still pressed against his own wound. “I guess I’ll be meeting you there.”

Murphy has gone still by the time he manages to take a few careful steps away, swaying heavily as he moves.

When he emerges again into the open battlefield, things have mostly quieted down. The remaining Saxons — at least the smart ones — seem to have turned tail in the absence of their king, fighting to escape back through the pass.

Camelot’s archers will pick off some unlucky few. The others will return and tell those who remain of the carnage that occurred here.

The remainder of the battlefield seems to be trying to account for those lost — looking for the injured among the dead, needing to know if anyone can be saved.

“Bell!”

Octavia runs up to him, throwing her arms around him in a triumphant hug. He stumbles, too much of his weight sagging into her waiting arms.

“Bell? Bellamy?!”

“I’m… fuck.”

She tries to help him towards the others, but they don’t make it far — just enough that the ground beneath them isn’t covered with the battered remains of the unfortunate. She lowers him to the grass, pulling at the straps of his armor until she can remove enough to see the stab wound.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says frantically, trying to staunch the bleeding. “It’s gonna be fine. You’re fine, Bell.”

He doesn’t pay attention to her words, knowing they’re more for her own peace of mind than anything else. With the sun dimly shining down on them through the cloud cover, he knows that he’s going to die here. With Steve, and Atom, and countless others who fought to defend his home. 

With Murphy.

“Are you okay?” He asks instead, eyes doing a catalogue of her, looking for any wounds. 

“I’m fine. Scratches, mostly. Maybe a broken rib or two. Nothing major,” she says absently. “And you’ll be the same way soon — you’ll see. Lincoln! Miller! I need your help!”

The others might run over, or perhaps they don’t. He can hardly focus on anything, and every ounce of his limited attention remains on Octavia.

“It was Murphy,” he chokes out.

“What was Murphy?” She’s hardly paying attention to his words, too distracted by the wound she can’t heal.

“The spy. The traitor. He was…” he chokes again, and blood comes out when he coughs. “He wanted to kill us both. To use the crisis to put himself on the throne.”

“That’s a fucking terrible plan,” she says, not looking up from his side. “He doesn’t have a base of support here.”

But they don’t really know that. Maybe he’d been swaying people to his cause in Camelot all along. It’ll be impossible to find out now. No one will pledge allegiance to a failed, dead rebel.

“You’ll have to take over.” His voice comes out airy and weak. He can’t feel his legs at all anymore, and the tips of his fingers are tingling uncomfortably. “But I know... I know you’ll do… amazingly.”

“No, Bell. You’re gonna be fine. I don’t want to be queen.”

“I know you don’t. But you’ll do it anyway. That’s who we are.”

Her lip quivers as she finally looks at his face, a sheen across his forehead and cheeks.

He continues. “Please. For me.”

She looks down at him sadly. Before her eyes, she must see the death of her dreams. While she’d never had the most freedom due to her proximity to the throne, at least as a princess turned knight, she could dictate much of her daily schedule. As the reigning Queen of Camelot, that will all disappear. She’ll be as shackled to the job as he was.

She purses her lips, a tear trailing down her face.

 _“If_ something happens, I swear I’ll protect Camelot in your honor. But you’re going to be fine. You’ll be fine.”

He coughs again, the pained spluttering exhausting him.

The others arrive at her side, asking panic-stricken questions, but she doesn’t bother answering. 

His body goes lax where he lays half in the grass and half on her lap. He can feel the thread tying him here coming untethered. 

With the last remaining strength in his body, he moves his fingers to caress the strip of Clarke’s dress still tied around his bicep. Her favor, given to him for protection.

“Burn me.”

“What?”

“My body. When I’m gone,” he says in short gasps. “Need to… Avalon. Clarke.”

She grabs at his face, trying to force him to stay, but there’s nothing that can stop this now.

Frenzied, she looks for anything that will help, and her eyes land on something at his hip.

His lips go numb, unable to form any final words. 

He wants to tell her to keep Excalibur for herself. He wants to tell her that, despite all that has happened, she should still trust her knights for their good council. He wants to tell her that he loves her, that he’s proud of her.

But he can’t.

Instead, his final word will always be the name of the woman who loved him, in secret and far too well.

As he slips away, soul called to the sky, she tips some water into his mouth, hoping desperately to revive him.

It’s too late. He’s already gone.

***

Octavia cries as her brother’s eyes go blank, but she keeps tipping the water into his mouth, unwilling to give up completely.

“It’s over,” Lincoln says, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her away carefully. “It’s over, O. He’s gone.”

His voice sounds wrecked.

The water in Bellamy’s mouth spills down over his cheeks, swirled with the red of his lifeblood.

But instead of dripping onto the ground and sinking into the dirt, it forms a little rivulet, running along the flat plain in a clear direction. There’s far too much of it — more, certainly, than what she’s poured out from his water skin — but it just keeps traveling along the ground to god knows where in a perfect line.

She watches it in awe, completely bemused by what’s happening. There is nothing at all strange about the waterskin — no reason to think that it is any bit different than the one she carries.

When she looks back to the source, wondering if somehow water is still spilling out of Bellamy’s mouth against all odds, she finds instead that he’s already gone.

Where his body had once lain, there is only a stain of deadened brown grass.

She gasps at the sight, overwhelmed by how sudden and immediate this has all been.

Once, she’d been a sister. Now that’s all over.

She cries for a moment into Lincoln’s shoulder, and his hand pets her back as he tries to take it all in. Bellamy is gone, and the sword with him.

Then Octavia wipes at her eyes, nodding once firmly, before standing up and calling her army to heel. They need to deal with the dead and return home.

And then they will all need to swear their allegiance to a new Pendragon.

Only after that will she be permitted to break down. That is the way of their family, and Bellamy had been teaching it to her for years.

***

Far away and nowhere at all, streaks of red dance in the lake’s clear water, and Clarke can’t stop herself from letting out a pained wail at the sight.

“Please. Just five more minutes.”

When no voice comes to reassure her of just a little bit more time, she sends the water into her a raging flurry around her. She has only a small amount of magic tied to the lake, but the anger in her — the fury and loss and desolation and _despair_ — makes her want to send floods across the whole world.

***

The first thing Bellamy feels is _cold._ So cold that he wonders if he’d accidentally fallen asleep with the window open. If there might be snow dusting the castle courtyards when he goes down for training today. If he might have to put off a visit to Clarke should the weather take a turn.

But when he tries to open his eyes — to turn his head on the pillow and look out the window — he finds that he can’t move. Can’t flutter his eyelids in the slightest, can’t force a single twitch from any muscle.

He feels trapped, caged within the confines of his own body.

And that’s when he remembers a few things all at once.

Firstly, it isn’t winter. There won’t be any snow outside the window.

And, far more importantly, he doubts there’s a window to look out of should he manage to open his eyes, because the last thing he can recall is dying in the field at Camlann.

He can’t imagine that they somehow kept him alive long enough to transport him back to the castle, which means he must not be in his room.

Tristan will not sleep in Bellamy’s bed as he’d predicted, but neither will Bellamy.

It raises a new issue: if he’s not at home, where is he, and why is he so fucking cold?

He languishes in the prison of his mind, remembering all the uncomfortable details about how he got here. He remembers the battle, remembers Atom and Steve and Hengroen. Remembers Murphy’s betrayal and Octavia’s oath.

The last thought brings him some small comfort but no real peace. If this is really the end — if Camlann was his final legacy in life — then shouldn’t he be on the shores of Avalon? Shouldn’t he be with Clarke again, already a ghost she cannot keep?

Insead he’s nowhere, caught between staying and going without any recourse for speeding along the outcome.

His body aches in a million different places, the very core of him both frozen and on fire.

He hopes the universe will decide soon. He will welcome death — embrace it warmly — if only it will put an end to this vast emptiness.

***

Clarke watches the lake with tears in her eyes, waiting for when he will come to make his final crossing.

He’s sworn, of course, that after reaching Avalon, he will then come back for her, finally ending the curse that ties her here as the prophecies have foresworn, but she knows that it will never happen. When Bellamy arrives to part ways with the mortal realm, it will be the last time she ever sees him.

Part of her — the small, selfish part that has always wanted to hold onto him too tightly despite knowing that it would crush him — longs to spend the rest of her endless life living on the other side of the lake with him. They could wait out eternity on the isle together, and she wouldn’t ever have to miss him.

Only she knows that it wouldn’t be fair to him. She’s seen firsthand what happens to the souls who stay on the isle instead of fully crossing over into the land of the dead. They become bitter shades of their former selves, unable to see past what was lost to them.

And Bellamy, the promised king at the height of his glory, has lost virtually everything save her. If she kept him around for her sake, she would have to watch as his loving, hopeful glow fades into contempt. She knows she can never do that. Not to herself, and not to him.

But she does want the chance to say one final goodbye, which is why, through bloodshot eyes, she never looks away from the shore. She knows — she _knows_ — that he’s dead, and yet his spirit hasn’t yet arrived.

An odd tugging sensation begins in her gut, pulling her forward towards the water.

For a second, she tries to resist the feeling, not wanting to be distracted when Bellamy arrives, but it becomes stronger, an almost painful tingle that beckons her forth. Against her will, she rises to her feet, toes sinking into the mud as she walks into the water.

Her dress billows out around her as the water rises first to her knees, then hips, then chest. When the water hits just beneath her breast bone, the sensation stops. She looks around carefully, trying to figure out why she’s been brought to this spot in particular.

Her eyes burn with unshed tears, and she hastily wipes at her cheeks with hands already wet.

In the water by her foot, she sees a glint of light that hadn’t been there a moment before.

As she looks down, she sees Excalibur come into view piece by piece, as though it is reforming from someplace else, each iota being called to return itself to her lake.

She watches it in awe, standing completely still so as not to interfere with the magic.

When it completes itself — looking perfect from point to pommel — she moves to bend over and grab it. She honestly can’t decide if she wants to return it to the stone so as to never see it again or keep it beside her always. Whatever she chooses though, she knows she doesn’t wish to leave it here to rust and ruin.

But then she stops, staring down into the rippling image beneath the water. 

Because the sword is complete — that much is certain — but something else is coming into being with it. Nothing more than a bit of gold and brown at first, something that hardly would’ve been noticeable if she hadn’t been watching so intently.

As it continues, though, it grows into _something,_ though she can’t tell exactly—

She gasps.

It’s a finger. A single digit wrapping itself around the sword’s hilt like it had always been there.

Eyes wide with shock, she freezes in place to watch as the hand seems to put itself back together, each remaining finger forming alongside the first. Then it spreads up to a wrist, an arm, a shoulder.

A torso grows from nothing at her feet, and she can almost hear the beat of a familiar heart in her mind when she sees it. When the chest is complete, the remaining limbs seem to come into focus as well. The body — _his_ body — wraps itself once more in Camelot reds, though his armor never reforms over his padded gambeson.

His head is the last thing to appear, and she can’t help but marvel in a sick sort of fascination as his cheeks, his eyes, his forehead reform before her, forged by the clays of the earth. Curls emerge, sprouting again from the top of his head before beginning to sway gently in the water. Dark eyelashes and pink lips. Wrinkles from his many smiles. Freckles.

He looks so peaceful in repose, but her heart lurches, wondering if he is nothing more than an empty vessel. It would be unimaginably cruel of the universe to bring him to her already dead.

“Please,” she whispers quietly, a prayer to the unknown.

Then she bends down, allowing her hand to caress his face. 

He lets out a sudden gasp, choking on the water around him, and she dredges him up quickly by the shoulders. With his head is above water again, she helps him to gain his footing enough to stay upright, patting his back as he tries to cough out a mixture of lake water and blood.

“Bellamy?” She gasps, almost unwilling to believe that _somehow_ her prayers were answered. A sob rises in her chest, but she forces it down. There’s no time — not now.

His shoulders eventually stop heaving, and he turns to her finally. His eyes are filled with confusion and fear, but they are his. Still warm and beautiful. Alive.

“This isn’t right. This isn’t— I was dead.”

She shakes her head frantically, moving to cradle his cheeks in her hands. His skin is so cold, and the water around them isn’t helping.

“You’re not. You’re not dead, Bellamy. The dead don’t come to me like this.” The hope-filled tremor in her voice is impossible to miss. She swallows heavily.

No one has ever come back so complete. The dead are ghosts. Memories of themselves. But Bellamy — he’s _whole._ He’s himself in every way.

She pulls him in close, holding his body to hers as she presses a kiss to just beneath his jaw.

Jubilance overcomes her. He’s really here. She can feel—

No, she can’t feel.

She panics for a moment, withdrawing her lips so she can press her fingertips to the same spot. When she feels nothing there, she moves them to his chest.

Nothing. Still and silent.

She draws in a jagged breath of air, hope abandoning her in an instant.

He watches her sadly, lips quivering slightly.

“I’m dead, Clarke.”

“This isn’t right,” she repeats. “This isn’t how it works. I’ve done this for two hundred years — I would know! This isn’t death!”

He takes her hands in his, squeezing them tenderly.

His smile is resigned. “But it isn’t life either.”

She buries herself in his chest, hands clinging to his back so the world can’t take him away from her again.

“Why—”

“I don’t know.”

He kisses her forehead, breathing her in as he had done just that morning. It had only been that _morning,_ only scant hours ago that he’d slept with her under the stars. That he’d touched her and held her and loved her.

He doesn’t even feel that different, but now he’s colder. He’s colder and he’s _dead._

“Will you go with me?” He asks, uncertainty lacing the words. “To the isle. I’m—” He stops, the word _afraid_ seeming to stick in his throat. “I don’t want to go alone. You can’t stay, but—”

She shakes her head back and forth from her place against him, not wanting to let him go. But after a moment, she manages to whisper out, “Okay.”

She calls to the boat from where it sits by the edge of the lake, using the water to urge it in their direction. Usually she’d get it herself — the power she has over the lake itself is finite and tiring — but she can’t bring herself to move away from him. She has an infinite number of minutes spread out before her, but only a few of them are still marked with his name.

When the skiff appears before them, he holds out a hand to help her in before climbing in across from her. 

Neither of them row the boat. She can’t bring herself to even think about moving them towards the Isle of Avalon, but it seems to know where it’s going without her input.

Neither of them says a word as they near their destination, but he holds her hands tightly within his own, a look of dread on his face. He’s still so cold, and she wonders if that’s just how he is now — no heartbeat despite the fact that he still seems to be in working order. No blood, no warmth. 

Animated, but not alive.

When it reaches the other side, they stumble out together, Clarke’s limbs feeling utterly useless. She tries to keep her steps steady, but the axis of the earth has shifted so sharply beneath her that she can’t quite figure out how to even begin righting things.

She leads him through the ruins, and she is grateful that no malevolent spirits seek them out. Perhaps he wards them off, a ghost among ghosts, or perhaps they are already deemed miserable enough.

“Like I said, I’ll come back for you. I’ll break your curse.”

She smiles at him tightly but gives no response. If she opens her mouth, she’s afraid the sob she’s desperately holding in will spill out unchecked.

They walk together through the ruins, and for some reason she leads him back to that long room with the rotted wood for floors and the doorway leading to Excalibur’s stone.

“How do I—?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I’ve never seen this part before. Everyone else crossed without my help, and when I was last here, Wells crossed back by just… fading away?”

He gets a look of concentration on his face, as though he’s trying to will himself to fade, but nothing happens. He lets out a little grunt before looking over to her in confusion.

“But Wells was less… uh, humanlike that you still are. Closer to the other side maybe? You’re a bit like how Lexa looked — still corporeal but not actually alive.”

“What made her different from Wells?”

Clarke swallows heavily, looking away from him. “She was angry. She held onto this world with taloned fingers because she couldn’t admit that her life was over. There was too much unfinished business.”

“I have unfinished business.” He looks at her heavily, and the ache in her chest grows. “Of course I do. But I also know I’m dead, and I can’t pretend otherwise the way that she could. Even if I’m sad, I’m not… I’m not angry. Not really. Not enough to trap me here.”

They reach the room, walking carefully across the distorted floorboards towards the other end. When they reach the heavy door, it opens for them.

“This is where I found it,” she says, pointing at the large boulder sitting front and center.

“You pulled Excalibur from _that?”_ The shock and amazement in his voice momentarily make her forget how terrible everything about this day is. She is emboldened by his pride in her, and her heart swells. 

“Yes. And now I suppose—”

She takes the sword out of his limp hand, raising it above her head to shove it back into the rock. It slices cleanly through, embedding itself once again in its resting place.

It feels almost impossible that she pulled it from this same spot only the day before. Everything has changed so entirely, and what was once a glorious triumph has now faded into a swan song. The dirge of the dying.

She takes a deep breath, trying to steel herself for what she must do. “Now I suppose we have to figure out how to put your mind at ease. Finish your business.”

He puts his hand on her shoulder, turning her so her back is against the solid wall of rock. Stepping in close to her, he brushes back a stray curl before letting his hand cup her jaw.

“I’ll _always_ have unfinished business with you, Clarke. That won’t change, because I’ll never be ready to leave you, even if I have every intention of coming straight back.”

“You have to, though. You have to leave.” she forces out. “Otherwise you’ll be trapped here until you hate me. Until your memories are warped into what might have been and you drive yourself mad.”

He shakes his head. “I can have regrets and still know peace. I’m lucky to have loved you for any length of time, even if I wanted more.”

She smiles up at him, tears in her eyes.

“Then take a little more.” She rises onto her tiptoes until her mouth is poised a hair’s breadth away. “Just five more minutes.”

She doesn’t need to say anything else before his mouth is on hers, ravenous in a way that she’s never seen him before. Even knowing that last night could — indeed, would — be their last night, he hadn’t been quite so overcome with his emotions, but now he can’t seem to be close enough. His hands move frantically across the planes of her face and down to the curves of her body, unable to rest until he’s touched every bit of her. She closes her eyes tightly, wanting to imprint this moment in her mind.

Wanting to be swept away in it, so she can convince herself it isn’t the end. That this isn’t their goodbye.

This is how their love works — short, wondrous bursts of light that they have to hold onto in the long periods of darkness. 

Not wanting to be sad — not right now when she still has him — she only swears to herself that she will keep this memory close, letting it warm her when he’s gone.

He crowds her further up against the stone, hands rucking up her dress until he can pull it off her entirely. She helps him guide it over her head before returning her lips to his eagerly.

He runs his hands over her bare skin, his cool fingers raising goosebumps on her. She gasps into his mouth as his thumb toys with her nipple, and she works to rid him of his own clothes, throwing each piece in a different direction as they come off. Part of his underclothes ends up wrapped halfway around Excalibur’s pommel still sticking out of the stone, and she laughs brightly at the sight.

“Gonna miss your laugh,” he says as he bites her lip.

“What’s to miss? You’ll be hearing it forever.”

It’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie.

But she wants to pretend for as long as possible, so she says it anyway.

“Okay,” he whispers, hitching her up against the stone so that her legs wrap around him.

She ruts her hips against him, trying to line them up to where she needs him to be. Instead, he brings his hand to her center, rubbing tight circles against her clit until she has to throw her head back. His lips find her throat, sucking bruises into her skin that she’ll cherish until they fade. She wants them etched into her for eternity. His mark on her life doesn’t deserve to be transient.

“You’re so gorgeous, Clarke,” he breathes out. “So gorgeous.”

She twists her hips again. “Stop… teasing…”

“What’s the rush when we have forever?”

She pulls on his curls until his mouth is on hers again.

“Because I want you _now.”_

“Your wish is my command.”

Then, without further prompting, he lines them up easily and thrusts in.

She gasps at the feeling as he begins to fuck her in earnest, though he’s careful to keep one hand behind her head the whole time.

“We’ll do this every day,” he pants out. Her hands move to clutch at his upper arms, muscles tensed and beautiful.

“Every day.”

A single tear slips past her guard, rolling down her cheek. He kisses it away.

He hits a spot in her that has her seeing stars, and it’s not long before she’s clenching tightly around him as she tips over the edge. He follows soon after, and he buries his face in her shoulder while they both come down.

His forehead touches hers and her legs slowly drop back down to the ground. Eyes still clenched tightly shut, he wraps her in his arms again.

“Five more minutes?” He asks, a little laugh escaping him in an attempt to pull focus from the hollowness in his chest.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, pulling him down to the grass alongside her before curling up against his body. “Five more minutes.”

They lay that way for a long time, and when she finally falls asleep, she prays that somehow he’s still holding her when she wakes up.

***

“Clarke. Clarke, wake up. Something’s wrong.”

She wakes up still surrounded by him, and for a moment she smiles, unwilling to consider that this is somehow a bad thing.

But then she looks up at him and sees the worry in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m… I shouldn’t still be here. Not in this form, at least. I’m dead. This isn’t right.”

“Maybe they don’t want you.”

“Be serious.”

She frowns. “Sorry. But it’s… I don’t know. I feel like I should be happy that you’re still here.”

“But it isn’t right, and we both know it. I need to die like any other person does. And then, once I have, I can come back for you. That was the plan.”

She sighs.

He looks at her sadly before continuing. “I spent all night trying to come to terms with what happened and find internal peace or whatever. But I’m still here, just the same as yesterday.”

“Then maybe it wasn’t about being at peace. Most people aren’t anyway. Everyone who crosses has regrets and unfinished business, but they still manage to do it.”

He shakes his head sadly.

“I need you to do something. Promise you’ll help me.”

“I’m going to need more information than that before I promise.”

He looks agonized, but he doesn’t relent, the backs of his fingers running down her face in order to pacify her. “Please, Clarke. I don’t think I can stay here like this forever. We have to try. Please swear you’ll help me.”

“I—”

She swallows back more tears, feeling exhausted by how much time she’s spent crying over the last three days. She just wants the nightmare to end, but not if it means…

“I don’t want to send you away. You won’t come back.”

“I _will.”_

“You won’t.” She turns her head to press a kiss to his palm. “But if you need me to help you,” she fights back her terror, “then I’ll try. I’ll try. That’s as much as I can promise.”

He leans in, resting his lips on hers. A heavy weight sits on her chest, fear churning inside her until she’s almost incapacitated by it.

Then he stands, reaching down to pull her up alongside him. When she’s gained her footing, he turns his back to her. Without warning, he moves to the highest point by the boulder and reaches out to Excalibur, pulling it once more.

“I guess you were right,” he says with a smile. “I was worthy enough.”

Not bothering to wait for a reply, he walks back over to her and takes her hand in his, manipulating it until her fingers are wrapped around the hilt. Then he steps back a pace, lifting the sword by the flat so that the tip is against his chest.

“Bellamy, are you crazy?”

“It worked for Lexa,” he says, an apologetic smile on his face. “So it should do the same for me.”

“We don’t know what it did to Lexa!” She says, hysterical at the thought of what he’s asking her to do. Still, she doesn’t drop her arm, and the point remains against his skin. “It could’ve done anything to her. For all we know, she isn’t even in Avalon! Maybe she’s just _gone,_ and now you’re asking me to potentially do the same to you?”

“What other choice do we have?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know.”

“Then please, Clarke. For me. You promised.”

“I promised to _try._ I don’t… I can’t.”

“You have to try, love. And since Excalibur never misses its target…”

A sob bursts out of her. “No, Bell. Please don’t ask this of me.”

The despair is written so clearly across his face, but he doesn’t weep. “I can do it myself, if that would be easier. But I’d rather… I’d rather it was you.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you,” he says, eyes shining. “And because I’m afraid. I’d feel better if it was by your hand. I can’t explain why. I just know that I want to leave the world looking at you.”

“Looking at me killing you?”

He smiles again. “Looking at you loving me and doing what you can to help me. I— I know it’s a lot to ask. It’s not fair. I’m sorry, I can…”

Then his voice falters, and she tries to resolve herself to what he’s begging her for.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Bellamy,” she whispers, digging the sword in a little further by accident. No blood rises to the surface, but she still panics when a hint of pain crosses his face. More tears spill down her face.

He must see the terrified, sickened determination in her eyes, because he knows that she isn’t backing out anymore.

“Don’t be. I love you. And I’ll come back.”

She closes her eyes, imagining the feeling of sunlight on her face and his strong, sure arms around her. She lets that feeling twist around her like armor.

“I love you. So much. I love you.”

Then she drives the sword forward.

***

He lets out a gasp, all the air leaving his body at once. It’s somehow nothing like Murphy’s stab wound — that had been a cold pain, the touch of death tempered in some ways by the millions of other feelings he’d been experiencing.

This is hot — too hot, really. The fire of Excalibur’s magic seems to slice cleanly through him until the blade pokes out from the center of his back. His hands rise shakily to meet the metal in his chest, but there is nothing to do. There’s no blood to staunch, no hope of survival.

Clarke’s eyes stay twisted closed, unwilling to let this be her last memory of him, and for that he’s grateful. He can only breathe for a few moments while the end meets him.

And then, of course, nothing happens.

“Fuck. Clarke?”

Her eyes fly open at the flippant tone of his voice. It probably hadn’t been what she’d expected after impaling him.

“Are you kidding me?!” She cries, dropping the sword from her hand as she falls to her knees. He has to quickly reach up to grab the other side of the sword so it doesn’t tug awkwardly where it’s still embedded in him. “All that and you’re _still here?!”_

Her cries turn into agonized wails interspersed with laughter, and if he wasn’t so confused and afraid himself, he wouldn’t know whether to find it funny or deeply troubling to witness her like this. This is her breaking point.

“I— I don’t understand.” He pulls the sword free, and the gaping hole in his chest seems to knit itself back together instantaneously. He shoves it back into the rock in irritation.

“I killed you, Bellamy. I stabbed you right through your heart on _your orders_ and you didn’t even have the decency to fucking die?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, kneeling beside her to pull her sobbing form into his arms again. He’s asked too much of her — made her traumatize herself for nothing. He tries to sooth her, rubbing her back and taking deep breaths that he hopes she will mirror.

“Is it wrong that I’m happy?” She asks, anguish evident. “Did I do this? Did my wishes that you could stay with me trap you here too?”

“No, Clarke. That can’t be it. And anyway, if anyone’s wishes trapped me here, they would be my own. But this isn’t like what happened with you and Lexa. No innocent comment made this happen, a wish spun into something ugly.”

“But I didn’t want you to go. I didn’t want to be alone. Maybe I’m the reason you can’t—”

“You’re not,” he shushes, kissing her forehead before trying to wipe away her tears. “I don’t know why this is happening, but I’m starting to think we can’t outsmart it. Whatever this is, it was supposed to happen. It was fated.”

She nods against him, but he doesn’t think it’s a conscious decision. Her mind is somewhere else entirely.

Her hands shake, and she stares down at them as though they’re covered in his blood.

“I’m fine, Clarke. I’m fine,” he whispers, pulling them up to his lips one by one. “Thank you for trying. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I love you,” she says, voice broken.

He tucks her head under his chin, burying his nose into her hair.

“I love you. I’m so sorry.”

***

He guides her out of Excalibur’s garden and back through the ruins. She curls into herself as they walk, but occasionally she has to give him directions when he tries to make an erroneous turn.

When they enter the boat, she manages to find her composure again, knowing that they still need to figure out whatever’s going on.

Bellamy reaches out, taking one of her hands in both of his. “So there’s only two options that I can think of left for why this is happening.”

“Tell me.”

“The first is that, against all odds, this somehow worked.”

“Worked?”

“I’m dead. I’ve been to Avalon, even if it was only this side. Your prophecy was that the dead had to return from Avalon before the guardian of the lake would be freed. So maybe…”

She looks at him warily. “You think this will be enough to break the curse?”

“I’m not sure. But we can’t rule it out until we get back to the other side of the lake. The mortal side.”

“And then I’ll... what? Do I crumble away like Wells did? Would you come with me? Or can I leave — walk out of here a free woman after two hundred years? And what happens to you then?”

He frowns. “I don’t know. Maybe I get to wait around for you this time, and then we can cross over together.” Then he chuckles, the smile lines returning to his face for a moment. Like the idea that the universe would’ve marked them out in this way — wouldn’t let them be apart even in death — is a beautiful, romantic idea to him.

“And the other option?”

The smile drops away.

“I’m the Once and Future King, right?”

“Yes,” she answers hesitantly.

“A druid called Gabriel told me that he was certain it was a prophecy. That, when I was needed most, I would return. I didn’t put that much faith in it — didn’t think it was possible — but…”

“You think this is a result of that prophecy?”

“I think maybe this is how the dead wait to be useful again.”

“Maybe it won’t take very long,” she says hopefully. “Maybe in a few years some new catastrophe will come along and it’ll call you back.”

He thinks of his sister sitting upon his throne. She might not have wanted it, but he knows she will rise to the occasion. Might grow to like it, even. (Honestly, he thinks she’ll probably grow to like it too much, but hopefully not so much that she becomes greedy).

And, despite the fact that chaos might be what calls him away from this state between life and death, he can’t wish that upon Octavia. He wants her, the Round Table, and all of Camelot to prosper in his absence. Their longevity can’t be tied to him forever.

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”

***

They hit the other side without any fanfare. They try, more out of curiosity than anything, to see if either of them can leave the confines of the lake and its surrounding area.

They only make it a few hundred feet before they’re stopped in their tracks, unable to go further. He sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck agitatedly even though he hadn’t really been expecting it to work.

“So it’s probably option two then.”

“Well… I guess I really did get my wish. I’m sorry.”

He kisses the bridge of her nose. “Don’t be. I can think of worse things than spending my death here with you.”

“It won’t be long.”

“When I do leave,” he says with unearned confidence, “I really will be the dead returning. I’m taking you with me.”

She smiles as genuinely as she can manage.

“It’s a date.”

***

Clarke had been sure — so sure in that way you can only be when you fundamentally refuse to consider other options — that it wouldn’t take long for Bellamy to be needed again. 

He was such a dynamic leader, and she can hardly imagine Camelot without him. Something would happen and it would call him back into the world the same way he’d first been called to her lake and Excalibur.

The first days pass easily enough, and they remain almost constantly naked as the sun streams through the leaves of the trees and down onto them. They curl and curve around each other, never wanting to be apart for longer than strictly necessary.

After years and years of stolen afternoons or moonlit meetings, having so much uninterrupted time feels like a gift, and though she feels badly for wishing he’d not have to leave, she can’t bring herself to entirely regret this turn of events. He’s only trapped for now. Destiny always arrives eventually.

Sometimes she has nightmares of what she’d done to him on the isle — nightmares of running him through with the sword until there was nothing left of him to save. Nightmares of knowing that _she,_ not Murphy, had truly killed him.

But each time he holds her, calmly repeating that he loves her, that he’d asked it of her, that she was brave and good to even try for him.

Eventually, those nightmares come less and less.

As days turn to weeks and months, they occasionally hear word from the chattier members of the recently departed, and it is from these encounters that they learn of Camelot’s fate.

Octavia had been crowned queen, her husband Lincoln named the prince consort alongside her. The loss of the kingdom’s beloved king had come as a shock to many, and some weren’t entirely prepared to accept a new ruler even within the Pendragon line, but Octavia had been doing a remarkable job of quelling discontent and leading the people out from under the shadow of battle.

The Saxons had lost their leader so abruptly as well, and in a state of disarray, they’d retreated swiftly back towards their own lands in the north. Essetir, suddenly having found their backbone after allowing the Saxons to do whatever they pleased, attacked the remaining troops on their journey home. It seemed, at least for a time, that the Saxon army would be greatly weakened by the losses they had sustained. No one would need to fear them for a while.

Bellamy always smiles when he hears such news, but the expression is touched by sadness, too.

“I know it was either this half-life or death,” he says one afternoon. “And there was never an option to go back in the first place. Not after Murphy’s killing blow. But sometimes I wish that I wasn’t somehow both so close and so far. I’d love to talk to Octavia again. Remind her that she’s not alone.”

“I understand,” she whispers, rubbing his back in gentle circles. “It was hard for the first lifetime I spent here, too. Knowing that everyone from before was still going on with their daily lives and I could no longer be a part of that with them. I’m sorry it had to happen to you like this.”

He smiles at her more genuinely this time. “It could be worse.”

She hopes it won’t take an entire lifetime for his return to come about. He deserves to see his sister again.

***

News comes a few years later that Octavia has given birth. Twins, actually. First a girl and then, a few minutes later, a boy. Apparently, Octavia was already campaigning to have the firstborn, no matter their gender, be the heir to the throne. 

The idea makes Bellamy laugh even in the midst of the sorrow he feels for never being able to meet his niece and nephew. He can imagine Octavia just as she had been at age ten, furious that the women in his stories never had the chance to decide their own fates. He’d rewritten the endings for her, creating epic journeys for Medusa and Circe and Medea to go on because it was what she deserved. She had always been capable of doing anything she set her mind to, and she had deserved stories that reflected that.

Now, as the most important person in all of Camelot, she will crusade for her eldest child — her daughter — to succeed her one day. He knows it’s a heavy burden to place on a baby, but any daughter of Octavia’s will be more than capable of living up to the task.

***

Marcus dies years later, and they spend hours speaking with him at the side of the lake before he feels an urge so strong to cross that he finally has to cut the conversation off apologetically. He’s dead in the way that Bellamy never truly can be, and as such he can’t stay on this shore forever.

They give him the traveller’s blessing, wishing him well in the next life. He smiles at his nephew — his _son_ — as he departs. As he crosses over, Aurora’s name slips out, and Bellamy wonders if she’ll be on the other side waiting for him.

***

Whatever catastrophe the universe needs Bellamy for seems to take its time coming. They don’t know if they should feel grateful or sad.

***

One day, perhaps forty or fifty-odd years later, long after the glow from being able to stay in this realm a little longer has worn off, they’re picking berries in the bushes when they hear a familiar voice.

“Bell?”

He drops his handful of blueberries in shock, the juice staining his hands purple as he pivots to follow the noise.

“O?”

He’d thought she’d look different — older, of course. She must be in her seventies at least by now. But instead she shows up looking exactly as she had the day he’d died. Every inch of her is the twenty-five year old warrior who wasn’t quite prepared to take the throne in his place.

“You’re here?” She asks, voice shaking in confusion.

“I’m… I don’t know. Waiting, I guess. Once and Future King or what have you. But O, you’re—”

She smiles wryly. “Dead.”

He opens his mouth, trying to think of anything to say, but the words don’t come. She wasn’t supposed to die. She was supposed to live long enough to see him come back. She was supposed to reign in his place.

“How?” He asks finally.

“I got old, Bell. It’s been a long time since Camlann.” Her smile drops, and her shoulders shake slightly. “I spent more than twice the amount of time without you than I did with you. It’s been so long. I never thought I’d see you again.”

He steps forward hesitantly, wanting so desperately to hug her, but he doesn’t think she’s quite tangible enough for something so encompassing. Instead, he brushes a lock of hair back from her face before resting his hand so, so gently on her shoulder. She doesn’t feel like a person — no skin or heat or anything he’s used to from either his years alive or his years here with Clarke. Instead, she feels more like smoke. 

“I’ve missed you. So much.” Tears well up in his eyes, and he tries to smile through them. “But I’m so proud of you, O. You can’t even begin to imagine how proud.”

She gets a far off look in her eyes, and he wonders if, at this exact moment and after all this time, she actually can imagine how proud he is. If maybe she’s thinking of her baby girl, now fully grown into a competent and strong princess, taking over in her absence.

“Rory will be a wonderful queen,” he says truthfully.

“You know about Rory?”

“I try to keep myself updated as much as possible. You named her after mom.”

“And you,” she says, smiling at the thought of first her daughter, and then all of her children. They’d had three in the end. A girl and two boys. “Aurora Bellamy Pendragon. But I guess we don’t use her middle name much. It was too hard, even after all that time.”

“I’m honored, O. Thank you for keeping part of me alive in her.”

They talk for as long as the laws of magic and death will allow, and when it becomes clear that she must go, they say goodbye with tears in their eyes. He hopes, if it’s even possible, that his second coming will bring her back with him, pulling her from the underworld like all the stories he’d told her. There’s no purpose in coming back to solve some great problem if she isn’t there with him.

***

Lincoln, Miller, and all the knights eventually follow. Raven, the blacksmith who’d married Sir Zeke Shaw and who Bellamy’d known in a distant sort of way, is the last familiar face that he watches cross over.

And then, about twenty years after that, the first of Octavia’s children arrives — her youngest son, who’d died in a jousting tournament gone wrong.

The twins follow about a decade later. He doesn’t even know what to say to them — to family members he’s never known. But he tells them who he is, tells them stories of their mother as a young girl. And it seems to ease their crossing from one world to the next. 

They all go where he can’t follow.

***

Year and years and years pass, and Bellamy begins to understand why Clarke could never bother keeping track of how long she’d been stuck there.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. He actually quite enjoys their little haven most of the time. It only becomes truly difficult when someone from his life dies — which no longer occurs after so long — or when a major event upends the world.

When Camelot comes under attack again, he thinks surely that this must be it — he’ll be called back to defend his kingdom and protect his people.

But he isn’t called back, and Camelot falls, becoming just another ruin.

A united Albion emerges eventually under a new name — England. The leadership isn’t strong and most of the power is factionalized, but it still technically exists. And for a time, the different leaders seem to fight amongst themselves, but eventually it’s consolidated under one family’s rule.

Then invasion comes again, and the cycle of bloodshed continues.

He thinks maybe it’ll be his time when the Normans arrive, but nothing happens. Then the fighting between two houses that nearly tears the country apart — the Wars of the Roses, though he only learns of that pithy little name later.

As hundreds of years spin around them like twine, nothing ever happens. No magical feeling pulls him any which way. Neither he nor Clarke can ever truly leave.

They take refuge in each other, feeling immensely grateful that neither is trapped alone to watch the centuries unfold.

One thing they do discover, really quite by accident, is that, as the years pass and magic seems to fade from the world entirely, they can travel further and further from the lake. The days of powerful curses and spells are a relic as much as they are, mere memories of a bygone time.

Technically their lake is still set in no particular place, but sometimes if they walk far enough, they can make it to some such town, interacting carefully with the people around them for a quarter hour or so before being forced back.

The ability to leave — to converse with new faces and occasionally steal something to entertain themselves with — becomes a boon they’d never anticipated. It’s nice to have even a momentary change of scenery, and it keeps their sanity intact.

***

They try to keep updated on what is happening, either through the ghosts, or to the occasional town visits, or even sometimes books if they can sneak them away.

They learn of another battle and a change in power, leading a few decades later to a king with a penchant for beheading wives. Bellamy scrunches his nose up in displeasure at this news. There’s nothing at all honorable in that, and he can’t help but lament the fact that the honor of knighthoods and titles no longer seems to come with the responsibility to others that had been so important to him.

Then the kingdom — the _country_ now — grows bigger. They claim Ireland first before merging with Scotland. These places look familiar enough to him drawn out, though their maps are far more precise than any from his time had been. The names have changed, of course, but he can picture in his mind’s eye the places they are talking about.

And then, seemingly all at once, it gets far bigger. The world, he realizes, is grander than anyone in Camelot could’ve ever known. Oceans away there are entirely new continents of peoples, and England, now Britain, begins trying to conquer those realms as well. He can hardly fathom any of it, so removed as he is from his own tiny, fallen dominion, but he can’t help but be stuck in his ways with the thought that it was better as it had once been.

There’s nothing at all of Camelot left in the world. They tell the stories — imperfect as they are — of his reign, and yet they do nothing at all to try to live up to the standards that had once dominated his life.

“The world has changed too much since you’ve been gone,” Clarke says, though the words are not unkind. It’s the truth that they both know; the land outside of their little oasis is unrecognizable now. _Machines_ and _factories_ dominate the country, and he can hardly imagine how it all works in his head, even after studying the concepts in detail. Parts of it make sense, and yet it’s all so unimaginably foreign.

“I know. But what’s the point then? What am I being kept around for? I’m not a part of this world any longer. I have nothing to offer them, a knight in a world of gunfire.”

War arrives as it always does, but this one is different. New weapons and bigger armies. They say it’ll be over by Christmas.

It isn’t.

They’re convinced, for a while, that this must be the thing that’ll pull him back, but the idea only manages to terrify Bellamy. He doesn’t know anything about machine guns and trenches. War looks nothing like Camlann, and he hadn’t even managed to be good at that. Excalibur, still looking untouched by time in its stone, cannot help anyone now.

But like everything else, the war passes around them. And then another war, somehow even bigger than the last. Tanks and submarines and death camps and all kinds of things that Clarke and Bellamy can’t comprehend. 

The world is too big for them, and they are no longer its citizens.

He starts to wonder why he’s the Once and Future King at all. He sits here for over a millennium, basking on the banks of their lake with the love of his endless life, but there’s nothing he can do to help anyone beyond their bubble. Even if he could leave for more than an hour at a time, he can’t protect anyone. He’s useless, frozen in time from a kingdom that no one can even label on a map anymore.

“The only way I can see it working,” he says one day as they’re eating dinner beneath a tree, legs tangled together, “is if I was essentially reborn into this new time. If I come back as I am now, I wouldn’t know enough about anything to get by. I’d need to start from scratch. But then…” he swallows, looking over at the woman who has stared through the veil of time with him, who has shared in every great and wonderful and terrible and awful moment of the last fifteen hundred years. “But then what happens to you? How do I bring you with me if I just… cease to exist here?”

“I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “Maybe we’re never meant to leave. Maybe this is our eternity.”

“To what end? What was the point of any of it? Your curse and my prophecy — are we being punished after all?”

“Maybe there never was a point. Or maybe there was, and somewhere along the way fate abandoned us.”

“Maybe.” He takes a bite of his food, not feeling as depressed by that thought as he once might’ve. They’ve both been through low periods — some easily lasting whole decades — but they always come through together. He takes her hand. “At least I have you.”

She smiles, stealing a bit of food out from under his nose. “You always will.”

***

“Do you ever feel sad?” She asks one day, thinking about their heroic feats long since forgotten. The chroniclers hadn’t even tried to get it right. Octavia as his wife instead of his sister, stuck in a love triangle with Bellamy and Lincoln? It was ridiculous. Then they’d added in all these strangely moral tales, as though Bellamy’s focus on being good in his own personal life wasn’t enough — instead they had to be _godly,_ wholly devoting themselves to the church of all things.

She gets a mention occasionally. Sometimes he’d pulled the sword from the stone himself, and other times she’d gifted it to him from the bottom of the lake. Neither is completely accurate, but they’re closer than just about anything else in the tales.

Of course, there is no retelling that includes their romance. That was their secret.

He looks at her in confusion. “Sad?”

“Not about what happened,” she says quickly. He had, of course, felt rather melancholic in the early days. So much potential, so much waste. “Sad that they don’t remember correctly. Sad that the bards didn’t stick to the facts, that the poets have lost your story to time.”

“I’m not sure. There’s a kind of beauty in being forgotten — turned into a myth that bears no resemblance to reality. It means the real story is just for us.”

“Still,” she says, fingers brushing through the blades of grass beside her, “it might’ve been nice to have the truth of it.”

“Yeah, well… To be fair, I didn’t always tell people the whole truth about how things occurred. Octavia and Miller were the only people who got a hasty retelling of how Excalibur came to be in my possession before Camlann, so I can’t really fault anyone for that story being wrong.”

“Okay, but the Arthur and Guinevere romance thing? That’s your sister.”

He grimaces. “I’d rather not remember what they turned that into.”

She laughs. “At least Lincoln ended up with a cool name. Lancelot.”

“Don’t remind me,” he groans. “It just makes me livid about how unfair it is that fucking _Murphy_ of all people ended up with the coolest name. Like, how does Murphy become Medraut become _Mordred?”_

“You think Mordred is a cooler name than King Arthur?”

“Yes!” He says emphatically, like this little detail has been eating away at him for a while, and she can’t help but tease him about it. Luckily he’s had some time to get over the betrayal that caused his death. Even Murphy cannot take up space in his mind for a millennium and half.

“Maybe in your next life, you’ll get to piss him off in return.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

His words are only said half in jest.

***

Usually, in spite of all of their attempts to keep up to date with the mercurial world around them, they tend to be the last to know about major changes. They hear of wars they’ll never see; they learn of places they’ll never visit. Even things like the internet — whatever it is — don’t reach their ears until suddenly you can carry it with you in a little pocket-sized box. Bellamy can’t even fathom how he’s meant to follow along with the ebb and flow of change any longer. He just lets it circle around them like the sun without prodding too closely. Eventually, if something is important enough, the news will make its way to them.

After all, it works that way with everything else, and it’s never been a problem before.

It’s not like that the day the bombs go off.

In the distance, they see an ugly, unnaturally orange sky, and they know that something bad has happened. Achingly loud noises, even from so far away, echo through the air.

In times of war, the ghosts who arrive at the lakeside don’t get the chance to stop and chat. They funnel through, crossing over as more show up behind them.

But Clarke has never seen so many all at once.

“What’s happening?” She whispers, watching as thousands of spirits cross in the span of a few seconds. The lake, which is usually crystal clear up to the point where it meets the dense fog, is now completely covered over in the transparent haze of the dead.

“I don’t know,” he replies, pulling her in close and wrapping his arms around her protectively. Another loud sound rings out, seemingly closer than the others. She wonders how close it must be now. If this lake isn’t really anywhere at all, can it still be touched by the destructive hand of bombs and fire and radiation?

“Do you think it’ll find us here? Do you think—?”

She doesn’t know the end of that sentence. The hopeful part wants to say _do you think this is your chance? Your time to return?_

But if that was the case, she thinks fate would’ve called him back to prevent this from happening. Whatever’s going on now, it’s too late to stop.

The other part of her thinks _do you think this is how it ends for us? After all this time?_

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers into the top of her head. She wonders if the words are meant to calm her or himself. Her fingers twist themselves into his tunic, worrying the fabric. “It’ll all be okay. It always is for us.”

She can’t help but think about what will happen if it’s not okay. He’s dead, so technically he can’t die again, but could his form be destroyed, blown apart to pieces so small that they could never reform?

And what about her? She’s not technically alive or dead — she just _is._ Is the magic that keeps her here stronger than the bombs? There’s already so little of it left in this realm.

“We’ll be okay,” she mutters into his neck. They sit down, curling into each other protectively as the sky around them goes up in flames. “We’ll be together. Wherever you go, I go, right? That’s the prophecy. I leave if you do.”

“Right. If I get pulled from Avalon, you’ll come with me. I promise. I won’t let you go.”

He tightens his arms around her, corded muscles making her feel safe as the cacophony continues.

He’s still whispering assurances when the nearest bombs hit, and everything goes dark.

***

_“Prisoners of The Ark, hear me now. You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us, indeed for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable.”_

Clarke Griffin hears those words as they plummet through space, and for a second, something in them resonates.

_A chance for all of us. Mankind itself._

She wonders what qualifies a group of delinquent children to save the world, but the answer is exactly as he’s stated: nothing. They’re spare parts. 

But then her eyes narrow as Wells continues trying to apologize from beside her, the words not reaching her ears. 

Because they are qualified, aren’t they? This is exactly what she’s been waiting for. What they spent _sixteen hundred years_ waiting to do.

Then she shakes her head violently in her seat, trying to expel that thought. It doesn’t make sense, of course. She’s seventeen years old — just spent half a year of her life in lockup in the skybox. The only thing she’d been waiting for was death or freedom.

Only… that’s familiar, too. As they hurtle towards the ground, her mind fills with images that aren’t her own.

A castle. A lake. Hands wrapped around a sword. A man. Golden skin and warm, brown eyes. Plunging a sword into his chest, and sobbing when he hadn’t died.

They flash past her so quickly that she can only get the faintest clues from them, and yet she’s somehow certain they didn’t come to her from an old film or a dream. Those were…

They felt like memories — like the long forgotten moments of her childhood that she could only dredge up once her mom clued her in to the event’s existence somewhere in the back of her brain.

But she couldn’t—

And then she remembers.

Bellamy’s eyes. Camelot red. Llamrei and Hengroen. Stolen moments as he brought her food as an excuse to visit. Asking after the sword even when he didn’t really care to retrieve it. A blue scrap of fabric tied around his arm.

Eternity together in their Eden, ended only by the—

The bombs. The bombs that ended the world.

By the time the dropship crashes into the earth with a bone-jolting shudder, her mind is so entirely somewhere else that she doesn’t register it.

She pulls off her restraints mechanically, disconnected from her body as Wells leads her to the door before which everyone is gathering.

Then she hears it.

“Hey, just back it up, guys.”

The words are so simple — nothing worth noting, though she finds it funny that he is taking command again already. Her eyes fly over to him immediately, taking him in for the first time in…

How long?

For the first time in this life, certainly. Seventeen years living together on the same small space station, and somehow they’d never realized who they’d once been to each other. 

She thinks of his words. 

_The only way I can see it working is if I was essentially reborn in this new time. I’d need to start from scratch._

He looks out at the crowd of children before him, his eyes roving over her but not stopping. Whatever it was that made her remember, it hasn’t happened to him.

His hand moves to pull the lever, intending to open the doors to whatever exists out there after the fires that had destroyed them burned through the world.

“Stop!” She cries out on instinct, pushing through the crowd to get closer. “The air could be toxic.”

He turns to her with a self-satisfied look. He’d rarely been so brazenly cocky in their previous life together, but even still, it’s not an unfamiliar look.

“If the air is toxic we’re all—”

He cuts himself off, staring at her in confusion.

“Bellamy?”

His head swivels to the ladder, looking back at someone that Clarke hasn’t seen in centuries. Technically they’d only met once — on the day of her death, actually — but she’s always been a part of Clarke’s life because of how important she’d been to Bellamy.

“My god,” he whispers, seemingly shocked to see her. “O?”

His eyes zip back and forth between the two women, as though he can’t quite place how this all fits into his life. Octavia, like all the delinquents on this dropship, has been in lockup for god knows how long, but it shouldn’t be a _surprise_ to see her here.

And he shouldn’t recognize Clarke at all, so if he does…

She tries not to get her hopes up.

Someone beside her — some angry kid with a weasely face — pipes up. “If you’re not gonna pull the lever, I will.”

“Shut the fuck up, Murphy,” he says, more heat in his words than is warranted. The boy tilts his head to the side in thought.

Bellamy continues to stare at her as the others shift uncomfortably around them. Maybe they think he’s angry — that he’s going to yell at her or make an example of this — but she knows that’s not what’s happening.

Then, with a little gasp, he whispers out a broken “Clarke?”

And she smiles at him knowingly.

When he hastily pulls the lever before rushing forward to kiss her, everyone around them wisely chooses to exit the dropship rather than ask any questions.

There’s time for that later. First, they have a world to save.

It’s prophesied. And they’ll do it like they do everything else: together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:
> 
> Camlann is famously the battle the King Arthur died at, so any readers who are familiar with the stories might've felt a little on edge when Miller first mentions that that's where they're going!
> 
> Mordred is the name of Arthur's killer. Who he is often changes (Arthur's son, Arthur's nephew, etc.), but he is always the one to finally end Arthur's life, and this story is no different, although since we know they don't keep everything 100% accurate in their retellings over the years, his name changes from Murphy and he becomes a relation to Bellamy rather than just his friend. It felt fitting both because of the name similarities and because of Murphy's early season behavior that he could conceivably fit this role. Sorry to any Murphy stans but it worked too well to pass up.
> 
> Clarke and Bellamy waited about 1600 years in total before the bombs started going off in the original Praimfaya (which happens in 2052 I believe). From there, they are reborn onto the Ark a few generations later to lead their people home. What comes next is up to you. I personally think it would be a better version of the first season of the show, ending in the sky people having their own little community on earth after stopping the threat of the Mountain without Lexa's help, but you can imagine whatever you like coming next.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Comments are very appreciated :)


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